m7G Methylation-Related Genes Impact Prognosis and Tumor Immune Microenvironment in bladder cancer

Abstract

Abstract Objective: N7-methylguanosine (m7G) is an important biological process of post-transcriptional modification. In recent years, the role of m7G in tumorigenesis and development has received more and more attention. However, the mechanism of m7G in bladder cancer and its impact on the immune microenvironment is still unclear. Methods: M7G-related genes were screened out from TCGA database. Through the LASSO regression analysis, the m7G-score was constructed. A nomogram incorporating m7G-score and clinicopathological characteristics was also constructed. Then, we evaluated the effect of m7G-score on TME and the relevance of immune cells. We also divided the cohort into 2 m7G-related patterns using unsupervised clustering. And the effect of high and low m7G-score on the drug sensitivity of patients by the “pRRophetic” package. Results: We established an 11-gene m7gscore based on training set and divided it into high and low-risk groups according to the median score. Further, m7Gscore also has good predictive ability in the test set and total cohort. A prognostic nomogram was constructed by combining m7gscore and clinicopathological features. The analysis of the TME showed that the high-risk group had more infiltrating immune cells and immune function, and were more sensitive to chemotherapy and immunotherapy. In addition, patients were divided into two patterns using unsupervised clustering and immune differences between the two groups were investigated. Conclusion: This study also evaluated the role of the m7G-score in predicting patient prognosis, immune microenvironment landscape, and drug sensitivity, providing new insights into the treatment of bladder cancer from the level of post-transcriptional modifications.