Identification of epigenetic genes for predicting prognosis and immunotherapy response of ovarian cancer

Abstract Background Epigenetic factors play a critical role in tumour development and progression. The aim of this study was to construct and validate a robust epigenetic gene set-based signature for predicting prognosis of ovarian cancer. Methods By using LASSO Cox regression model, we screened out the most useful prognostic epigenetic factors and a prognostic signature was developed based on them. Survival receiver operating characteristic was used to test the prognostic accuracy of signature in training and validation sets. The associations between the risk scores and immune cell infiltration, tumour purity, immune checkpoint inhibitor genes expression were also assessed in ovarian cancer . Results A total of 26 epigenetic factors were identified to develop the prognostic signature. In the training set, the prognosis of high-risk patients was strikingly poorer than that of low-risk patients (hazard ratio: 2.11, 95% confidence interval: 1.65–2.72, P