Identification and Validation of FGF-Related Prognostic Signatures in Prostate Cancer

BACKGROUND: FGF signaling is critical to controlling various cancers. Nevertheless, the functions of FGF-related genes in PCa are still unknown. OBJECTIVE: The objective of this study is to build a FGF-related signature that was capable of accurately predicting PCa survival and prognosis for BCR. METHODS: The univariate and multivariate Cox regression, infiltrating immune cells, LASSO, and GSEA analyses were carried out to build a prognostic model. RESULTS: A FGF-related signature that consists of PIK3CA and SOS1 was developed for the purpose of predicting PCa prognosis, and all patients were categorized into low- and high-risk groups. In comparison to the low-risk group, high-risk score patients had poorer BCR survival. This signature's predictive power has been investigated utilizing the AUC of the ROC curves. The risk score has been shown to be an independent prognostic factor by multivariate analysis. The four enriched pathways of the high-risk group were obtained by gene set enrichment analysis (GSEA) and found to be associated with the tumorigenesis and development of PCa, including focal adhesion, TGF-β signaling pathway, adherens junction, and ECM receptor interaction. The high-risk groups had considerably higher levels of immune status and tumor immune cell infiltration, suggesting a more favorable response to immune checkpoint inhibitors. IHC found that the expression of the two FGF-related genes in the predictive signature was extremely different in PCa tissues. CONCLUSION: To summarize, our FGF-related risk signature may effectively predict and diagnose PCa, indicating that in PCa patients, they are potential therapeutic targets and promising prognostic biomarkers.