Long non-coding RNA TP73-AS1 is a potential immune related prognostic biomarker for glioma

Glioma is one of the most common primary brain tumors, and is divided into low-grade and high-grade gliomas. Long non-coding RNAs have been increasingly implicated in the pathogenesis and prognosis of glioma. Here, we demonstrated that the long non-coding RNA TP73-AS1 is differentially expressed among gliomas with different clinicopathological features in The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA), Chinese Glioma Genome Atlas (CGGA), and GEO glioma datasets; high expression of TP73-AS1 was associated with poor clinical features, including age, stage, IDH mutation status, 1p/19q co-deletion status and overall survival. Measuring TP73-AS1 expression using real-time PCR showed the same result for 76 glioma tissue samples from our hospital. The infiltration levels of various immune cells in the tumor microenvironment were found to be significantly higher in patients with high expression of TP73-AS1. Taken together, our results suggest that TP73-AS1 has potential as a prognostic glioma biomarker. Moreover, the knowledge that TP73-AS1 affects the glioma immune microenvironment may provide new information for the immunological research and treatment of glioma.