The prognosis of melanoma patients is highly variable due to multiple factors conditioning immune response and driving metastatic progression.,In this study, we have correlated the expression of immune-related lncRNAs with patient survival, developed a prognostic model, and investigated the characteristics of immune response in the diverse groups.,The gene expression profiles and prognostic information of 470 melanoma patients were downloaded from TCGA database.,Significantly predictive lncRNAs were identified by multivariate Cox regression analyses, and a prognostic model based on these variables was constructed to predict survival.,Kaplan-Meier curves were plotted to estimate overall survival.,The predictive accuracy of the model was evaluated by the area under the ROC curve (AUC).,Principal component analysis was used to observe the distribution of immune-related genes.,CIBERSORT and ESTIMATE were used to evaluate the composition of immune cells and the immune microenvironment.,Eight immune-related lncRNAs were determined to be prognostic by multivariate COX regression analysis.,The patient scores were calculated and divided into high- and low-risk groups.,The model could effectively predict the prognosis in patients of different stages.,The AUC of the model is 0.784, which was significantly higher than that of the other variables.,There were significant differences in the distribution of immune-related genes between two groups; the immune score and immune function enrichment score were higher in the low risk group.
Melanoma is the deadliest form of skin cancer, and little is known about the impact of deregulated expression of long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) in the progression of this cancer.,In this study, we explored RNA-Seq data to search for lncRNAs associated with melanoma progression.,We found distinct lncRNA gene expression patterns across melanocytes, primary and metastatic melanoma cells.,Also, we observed upregulation of the lncRNA ZEB1-AS1 (ZEB1 antisense RNA 1) in melanoma cell lines.,Data analysis from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) confirmed higher ZEB1-AS1 expression in metastatic melanoma and its association with hotspot mutations in BRAF (B-Raf proto-oncogene, serine/threonine kinase) gene and RAS family genes.,In addition, a positive correlation between ZEB1-AS1 and ZEB1 (zinc finger E-box binding homeobox 1) gene expression was verified in primary and metastatic melanomas.,Using gene expression signatures indicative of invasive or proliferative phenotypes, we found an association between ZEB1-AS1 upregulation and a transcriptional profile for invasiveness.,Enrichment analysis of correlated genes demonstrated cancer genes and pathways associated with ZEB1-AS1.,We suggest that the lncRNA ZEB1-AS1 could function by activating ZEB1 gene expression, thereby influencing invasiveness and phenotype switching in melanoma, an epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT)-like process, which the ZEB1 gene has an essential role.