Establishment and validation of an aging-related risk signature associated with prognosis and tumor immune microenvironment in breast cancer

BACKGROUND: Breast cancer (BC) is a highly malignant and heterogeneous tumor which is currently the cancer with the highest incidence and seriously endangers the survival and prognosis of patients. Aging, as a research hotspot in recent years, is widely considered to be involved in the occurrence and development of a variety of tumors. However, the relationship between aging-related genes (ARGs) and BC has not yet been fully elucidated. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The expression profiles and clinicopathological data were acquired in the Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and the gene expression omnibus (GEO) database. Firstly, the differentially expressed ARGs in BC and normal breast tissues were investigated. Based on these differential genes, a risk model was constructed composed of 11 ARGs via univariate and multivariate Cox analysis. Subsequently, survival analysis, independent prognostic analysis, time-dependent receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis and nomogram were performed to assess its ability to sensitively and specifically predict the survival and prognosis of patients, which was also verified in the validation set. In addition, functional enrichment analysis and immune infiltration analysis were applied to reveal the relationship between the risk scores and tumor immune microenvironment, immune status and immunotherapy. Finally, multiple datasets and real‐time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) were utilized to verify the expression level of the key genes. RESULTS: An 11-gene signature (including FABP7, IGHD, SPIB, CTSW, IGKC, SEZ6, S100B, CXCL1, IGLV6-57, CPLX2 and CCL19) was established to predict the survival of BC patients, which was validated by the GEO cohort. Based on the risk model, the BC patients were divided into high- and low-risk groups, and the high-risk patients showed worse survival. Stepwise ROC analysis and Cox analyses demonstrated the good performance and independence of the model. Moreover, a nomogram combined with the risk score and clinical parameters was built for prognostic prediction. Functional enrichment analysis revealed the robust relationship between the risk model with immune-related functions and pathways. Subsequent immune microenvironment analysis, immunotherapy, etc., indicated that the immune status of patients in the high-risk group decreased, and the anti-tumor immune function was impaired, which was significantly different with those in the low-risk group. Eventually, the expression level of FABP7, IGHD, SPIB, CTSW, IGKC, SEZ6, S100B, CXCL1, IGLV6-57 and CCL19 was identified as down-regulated in tumor cell line, while CPLX2 up-regulated, which was mostly similar with the results in TCGA and Human Protein Atlas (HPA) via RT-PCR. CONCLUSIONS: In summary, our study constructed a risk model composed of ARGs, which could be used as a solid model for predicting the survival and prognosis of BC patients. Moreover, this model also played an important role in tumor immunity, providing a new direction for patient immune status assessment and immunotherapy selection. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s40001-022-00924-4.