Constructing a prognostic model for colon cancer: insights from immunity-related genes

Colon cancer (CC) is a malignancy associated with significant morbidity and mortality within the gastrointestinal tract. Recurrence and metastasis are the main factors affecting the prognosis of CC patients undergoing radical surgery; consequently, we attempted to determine the impact of immunity-related genes.

We constructed a CC risk model based on ZG16, MPC1, RBM47, SMOX, CPM and DNASE1L3. Consistently, we found that a significant association was found between the expression of most characteristic genes and tumor mutation burden (TMB), microsatellite instability (MSI) and neoantigen (NEO). Additionally, a notable decrease in RBM47 expression was observed in CC tissues compared with that in normal tissues. Moreover, RBM47 expression was correlated with clinicopathological characteristics and improved disease-free survival (DFS) and overall survival (OS) among patients with CC. Lastly, immunohistochemistry and co-immunofluorescence staining revealed a clear positive correlation between RBM47 and CXCL13 in mature tertiary lymphoid structures (TLS) region.

We conclude that RBM47 was identified as a prognostic-related gene, which was of great significance to the prognosis evaluation of patients with CC and was correlated with CXCL13 in the TLS region.