Identification of gene-set signature in early-stage hepatocellular carcinoma and relevant immune characteristics

The incidence of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is rising worldwide, and there is limited therapeutic efficacy due to tumor microenvironment heterogeneity and difficulty in early-stage screening. This study aimed to develop and validate a gene set-based signature for early-stage HCC patients and further explored specific marker dysregulation mechanisms as well as immune characteristics.We performed an integrated bioinformatics analysis of genomic, transcriptomic and clinical data with three independent cohorts. We systematically reviewed the crosstalk between specific genes, tumor prognosis, immune characteristics and biological function in the different pathological stage samples. Univariate and multivariate survival analysis were performed in TCGA patients with survival data. DEN-induced HCC in wistar rat was employed to verify the reliability of the predictions