Significance of TP53 and immune-related genes to prostate cancer

BACKGROUND: Prostate cancer (PCa) is one of most common male neoplasms. TP53 is the tumor suppressor gene with the highest correlation with human tumorigenesis discovered so far. Besides the TP53, immune-related genes attracted much attention since the clinical application of PD-1/PD-L1 (programmed death 1/programmed cell death-ligand 1) related drugs. There is currently a lack of studies that combine TP53 with immune-related genes to analyze the prognosis of prostate cancer patients. METHODS: Differentially expressed genes were filtered out by R package (edgeR) based on the TCGA-PRAD (The Cancer Genome Atlas-Prostate adenocarcinoma) data set. Using the R package (coxph), we distinguished which ones were related to survival prognosis. Constructing high and low risk groups, we used GEO (Gene Expression Omnibus) data set to verify the prediction performance. Subsequently, we explored the functional differences in gene expression between high and low risk groups. RESULTS: A total of six immune-related genes can be seen as prognostic factors in individuals with TP53 mutations. In the high-risk group, genes related to macrophage activation, epithelial cell apoptosis, and inflammation of the skin should be highly expressed. In the low-risk group, highly expressed genes are mainly involved in nucleotide phosphorylation, tRNA metabolism, and mitochondrial metabolism. CONCLUSIONS: Mutations in the TP53 gene can adversely affect the prognosis of prostate cancer and prostate cancer patients with mutations in some immune-related genes together have a worse prognosis. Compared with any other single clinical index, the prognostic score we proposed gave a more accurate forecast. In order to assist clinicians in making predictive assessments, we have also drawn a nomogram of the prognosis of prostate cancer patients.