Construction of immune cell infiltration score model to assess prognostic ability of tumor immune environment in lung adenocarcinoma

Objectives: The immune cell infiltration (ICI) in the tumor microenvironment (TME) can provide a reference for prognosis after immunotherapy. We aim to establish an ICI scoring model and evaluate its predictive ability for the immunotherapy efficacy and the prognosis in lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD) patients. Methods: We developed and analyzed the landscape of infiltrative immune cells based on the CIBERSORT and ESTIMATE algorithms. Then, three clusters of LUAD patients were discerned from TCGA-LUAD and GSE11969 data. Furthermore, two gene clus-ters were classified based on the PCA. Results: LUAD patients with better prognoses tend to have higher immune checkpoint expression and immune/stromal scores. There is a correlation between TMB and ICI, and their relation-ship deserves further exploration. Moreover, the early-stage and male patients with high ICI scores have more pro-longed survival. Conclusions: The feasibility of the ICI score model in evaluating prognosis after immune checkpoint therapy for LUAD patients was verified, specifically reflected in the screening of sensitive immune checkpoints as a treatment reference. The scoring system can accurately predict the overall survival of LUAD patients, which has clinical value to monitor disease and evaluate prognosis.