Objective: Breast cancer is a prevalent malignancy that predominantly affects women. The development and progression of this disease are strongly influenced by the tumor microenvironment and immune infiltration. Therefore, investigating immune-related genes associated with breast cancer prognosis is a crucial approach to enhance the diagnosis and treatment of breast cancer.Methods: We analyzed data from the TCGA database to determine the proportion of invasive immune cells, immune components, and matrix components in breast cancer patients. Using this data, we constructed a risk prediction model to predict breast cancer prognosis and evaluated the correlation between KLRB1 expression and clinicopathological features and immune invasion. Additionally, we investigated the role of KLRB1 in breast cancer using various experimental techniques including real-time quantitative PCR, MTT assays, Transwell assays, Wound healing assays, EdU assays, and flow cytometry.Results: The functional enrichment analysis of immune and stromal components in breast cancer revealed that T cell activation, differentiation, and regulation, as well as lymphocyte differentiation and regulation, play critical roles in determining the status of the tumor microenvironment. These DEGs are therefore considered key factors affecting TME status. Additionally, immune-related gene risk models were constructed and found to be effective predictors of breast cancer prognosis. Further analysis through KM survival analysis and univariate and multivariate Cox regression analysis demonstrated that KLRB1 is an independent prognostic factor for breast cancer. KLRB1 is closely associated with immunoinfiltrating cells. Finally, in vitro experiments confirmed that overexpression of KLRB1 inhibits breast cancer cell proliferation, migration, invasion, and DNA replication ability. KLRB1 was also found to inhibit the proliferation of breast cancer cells by blocking cell division in the G1/M phase.Conclusion: KLRB1 may be a potential prognostic marker and therapeutic target associated with the microenzymic environment of breast cancer tumors, providing a new direction for breast cancer treatment.
Androgen receptor (AR) is strong association with breast cancer (BRCA). We aimed to investigate the effect of the androgen receptor signaling pathway-related long non-coding RNAs (ARSP-related lncRNAs) on the process of subtype classification and the tumor microenvironment (TME) of breast cancer (BRCA). Our study screen ARSP-related lncRNAs for the construction of a risk model. The single-sample gene set enrichment analysis (ssGSEA) method was used to detect the differences between the immune responses generated by the patients belonging to the low- and high-risk groups. The relationship between the ARSP-related lncRNAs and TME was explored following the process of cluster analysis. The univariate Cox analysis and the Lasso regression analysis method was used to screen nine of these lncRNAs to develop a risk model. It was observed that risk score could function as an independent prognostic factor, affecting the prognoses of patients suffering from BRCA. The validity of the model was assessed by analyzing the generated calibration curves and a nomogram. Additionally, the effect of the risk score on the extent of immune cell infiltration realized in TME was explored. M2 macrophages correlated positively, whereas NK cells, CD4+ T cells, and naive B cells correlated negatively with the risk score. Results obtained using the cluster analysis indicated that immune scores correlated with clustered subtypes. Finally, the risk score and cluster subtypes were analyzed to study the sensitivity of the patients toward different drugs to identify the appropriate therapeutic agents. The prognoses of patients suffering from BRCA can be accurately predicted by ARSP-related lncRNAs.
Understanding the association of pyroptosis with tumor progression, prognosis and effect on immunotherapeutic response in breast cancer (BC) is limited. This study analysed forty pyroptosis-related genes to construct the pyroptosis score. Association of the pyroptosis score with the overall survival, clinical features, tumor mutation load, immune cell infiltration, and treatment sensitivity of patients with BC was analysed. Out of 983 BC samples, 304 (30.93%) had genetic alterations with the highest TP53 frequency. We identified three separate subtypes associated with pyroptosis action. These subtypes correlate with the clinicopathological characteristics, TME immune cell infiltration, and disease prognosis. Based on the expression levels of the pyroptosis genes, we divided the pyroptosis score into a high group and a low group. The immune-activated pyroptosis subtype had a higher score with a better prognosis. We also observed that the pyroptosis score correlates with the tumor mutation burden. The pyroptosis score and disease prognosis were directly proportional. A higher pyroptosis score indicated a better prognosis. Results suggest that the pyroptosis-related gene prognosis model is closely related to the immune cell infiltration of BC. The three pyroptosis subtypes associated with BC assist in accurately identifying the tumor subtype, the prognosis of immunotherapy drugs and the patient’s therapeutic response.