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Updated: Aug 30, 2025

Next Generation Sequencing for the Detection of Actionable Mutations in Solid and Liquid Tumors
Published on: September 20, 2016
Molecular subtyping for lung adenocarcinoma and a novel prognostic model based on ligand-receptor pairs
Dong Li1, Xuchen Ma1, Songlei Ou1
1Department of Thoracic Surgery, Beijing Anzhen Hospital Affiliated to Capital Medical University, Beijing Anzhen Hospital Affiliated to Capital Medical University, Beijing, China.
Purpose:
Lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD) is a leading cause of cancer death worldwide. Ligands and receptors play important roles in cell communication. This study aimed to demonstrate the importance of ligand-receptor (LR) pairs in LUAD development through constructing molecular subtypes and a prognostic model based on LR pairs.
Materials And Methods:
A total of 1110 LUAD samples with clinical and expression data were obtained from public databases. Unsupervised consensus clustering was applied to construct molecular subtypes based on LR pairs. Least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) Cox regression and stepwise Akaike information criterion (stepAIC) were conducted to build a prognostic model.
Results:
Three molecular subtypes (C1, C2 and C3) were constructed based on 17 prognosis-related LR pairs. C1 subtype had the worst prognosis, while C3 subtype had the optimal prognosis. Oncogenic pathways such as epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) were activated in C1 subtype. A prognostic model was built based on 8 LR pairs, and could classify samples into high- and low-LR score groups. Two groups had distinct overall survival and tumor microenvironment (TME). High-LR score group was more sensitive to chemotherapeutic drugs, while low-LR score group could benefit much from anti-PD-1/PD-L1 therapy.
Conclusions:
The study showed that LR pairs played critical roles in LUAD development. The prognostic model could predict prognosis and guide personalized therapy for LUAD patients.

