Bioinformatic Analyses Identify a Prognostic Autophagy-Related Long Non-coding RNA Signature Associated With Immune Microenvironment in Diffuse Gliomas

BACKGROUND: Autophagy and long non-coding RNA (lncRNA) play a critical role in tumor progression and microenvironment. However, the role of autophagy-related lncRNAs (ARLs) in glioma microenvironment remains unclear. METHODS: A total of 988 diffuse glioma samples were extracted from TCGA and CGGA databases. Consensus clustering was applied to reveal different subgroups of diffuse gliomas. Kaplan-Meier analysis was used to evaluate survival differences between groups. The infiltration of immune cells was estimated by ssGSEA, TIMER, and CIBERSORT algorithms. The construction of ARL signature was conducted using principal component analysis. RESULTS: Consensus clustering revealed two clusters of diffuse gliomas, in which cluster 1 was associated with poor prognosis and enriched with malignant subtypes of gliomas. Moreover, cluster 1 exhibited high apoptotic and immune characteristics, and it had a low purity and high infiltration of several immune cells. The constructed ARL signature showed a promising accuracy in predicting the prognosis of glioma patients. ARL score was significantly elevated in the malignant subtype of glioma and the high ARL score indicated a poor prognosis. Besides, the high ARL score notably indicated low tumor purity and high infiltration of macrophages and neutrophils. CONCLUSION: Our study developed and validated a novel ARL signature for the classification of diffuse glioma, which was closely associated with glioma immune microenvironment and could serve as a promising prognostic biomarker for glioma patients.