Epithelial-Mesenchymal Transformation Related Genomic Analysis Reveals Prognostic And Immunogenic Significance In Colorectal Cancer

Abstract Background: Colorectal cancer (CRC) is the third most commonly diagnosed cancer worldwide. Epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) has been viewed to play a vital role in immune regulation and treatment response shaping. EMT is associated with an invasive or metastatic phenotype in CRC and is also related to patient prognosis and treatment responsiveness. We aimed to explore an EMT gene panel with potential application in patient classification and precise treatment and assist clinicians to generate individualized immunotherapeutic strategies for CRC patients.Methods: TCGA, GEO, STRING, TRRUST, TragetScan, miRTarBase, miRDB, cBioPortal, StarBase databases were utilized in this study.Results: In this study, EMT factors were screened in three different ways(EMT factors, EMT-related pathways, EMT genotyping genes).And the prognosis-related modules were screened by the WGCNA method. Then, Cox single factor regression analysis was performed on the module hub gene, combined with multivariate Cox regression, the prognosis model was established, and the risk score of each sample was calculated. Then the samples were divided into high-risk samples and low-risk samples according to the risk score, and the differences in immune cell infiltration, mutation, CNV, clinical characteristics between high-risk and low-risk samples were compared. The risk model can effectively predict the prognosis of samples, which is verified by two external data, and it can also effectively predict the prognosis of CRC samples in the other two digestive tract cancers (liver cancer and gastric cancer) and has a good indication for the effect of chemotherapy treatment response and immunotherapy. Conclusion: The prognosis model can effectively predict the prognosis of samples and may be an effective tool for treatment guidance in CRC patients.