Construction of an Immunophenoscore-Related Signature for Evaluating Prognosis and Immunotherapy Sensitivity in Ovarian Cancer

[Image: see text] Ovarian cancer (OC) is the deadliest gynecological malignancy in the world, and immunotherapy is emerging as a promising treatment.

Immunophenoscore (IPS) is a robust biomarker distinguishing sensitive responders from immunotherapy.

In this study, we aimed to construct a prognostic model for predicting overall survival (OS) and identifying patients who would benefit from immunotherapy.

First, we combined The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and The Cancer Immune Atlas (TCIA) data sets and incorporated 229 OC samples into a training cohort.

The validation cohort included 240 OC samples from the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) cohort.

The training cohort was divided into high- and low-IPS subgroups to obtain differentially expressed genes (DEGs).

DEGs with OS were identified by Univariate Cox regression analysis.

The least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) Cox regression was used to construct the prognostic model.

Then, immune and mutation analyses were performed to explore the relationship between the model and the tumor microenvironment (TME) and tumor mutation burden (TMB).

Eighty-three DEGs were obtained between the high-and low-IPS subgroups, where 17 DEGs were associated with OS.

The five essential genes were selected to establish the prognostic model, which showed high accuracy for predicting OS and could be an independent survival indicator.

OC samples that were divided by risk scores showed distinguished immune status, TME, TMB, immunotherapy response, and chemotherapy sensitivity.

Similar results were validated in the GEO cohort.

We developed an immunophenoscore-related signature associated with the TME to predict OS and response to immunotherapy in OC.