Transcriptome analysis reveals the prognostic and immune infiltration characteristics of glycolysis and hypoxia in head and neck squamous cell carcinoma

(2022) 22:352 Liu et al BMC Cancer https://doi.org/10.1186/s12885-022-09449-9 Open Access RESEARCH Transcriptome analysis reveals the prognostic and immune infiltration characteristics of glycolysis and hypoxia in head and neck squamous cell carcinoma Jun Liu1,2†, Jianjun Lu3,4† and Wenli Li1*  Abstract  Background:  This study aims to construct a new prognostic gene signature in survival prediction and risk stratification for patients with Head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) Method:  The transcriptome profiling data and hallmark gene sets in the Molecular Signatures Database was used to explore the cancer hallmarks most relevant to the prognosis of HNSCC patients Differential gene expression analysis, weighted gene co-expression network analysis, univariate COX regression analysis, random forest algorithm and multiple combinatorial screening were used to construct the prognostic gene signature The predictive ability of gene signature was verified in the TCGA HNSCC cohort as the training set and the GEO HNSCC cohorts (GSE41613 and GSE42743) as the validation sets, respectively Moreover, the correlations between risk scores and immune infiltration patterns, as well as risk scores and genomic changes were explored Results:  A total of 3391 differentially expressed genes in HNSCC were screened Glycolysis and hypoxia were screened as the main risk factors for OS in HNSCC Using univariate Cox analysis, 97 prognostic candidates were identified (P