scholarly journals Analysis of Autophagy-Related Signatures in The Tumor Immune Microenvironment and Identification of Clinical Prognostic Markers in Bladder Carcinoma

Author(s):  
Huifeng Cao ◽  
Dayin Chen ◽  
Zhihui Zhang ◽  
Liang Cheng ◽  
Zhenguo Luo ◽  
...  

Abstract Objectives: Bladder carcinoma (BLCA) is one of the most common malignant diseases of urinary system. Our study aimed to investigate the autophagy-related signatures in the tumor immune microenvironment and construct effective prognosis prediction model.Methods: RNA sequencing data and corresponding clinical information of BLCA were downloaded from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO). Autophagy-related genes were extracted from TCGA dataset for consensus clustering analysis, and differences in survival rate were analyzed. STIMATE algorithm was used to analyze the tumor microenvironment (TME) and immune cell infiltration was compared between different clusters. Differentially expressed genes (DEGs) between different clusters were identified, followed by function annotation. Independent prognostic signatures were further revealed to construct prognostic prediction model.Results: We identified 35 autophagy-related genes associated with prognosis. Survival rate of samples in cluster 1 was significant lower than that in cluster 2. Cluster 2 had markedly lower tumor purity and significantly higher estimate score and stromal score than cluster 1. The proportions of T cells CD8, macrophages M1, T cells CD4 memory activated, NK cells activated, and dendritic cells activated were higher in cluster 1. There were 1,275 DEGs which were mainly enriched in functions and pathways related to immune response and cancer. Seven genes (ATF6, CAPN2, NAMPT, NPC1, P4HB, PIK3C3, and RPTOR) were further identified as the independent prognostic signatures to construct risk score prediction model, which had good prediction performance.Conclusion: Prognosis prediction model based on 7 autophagy-related genes may have great value in BLCA prognosis prediction.

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Alissa Visram ◽  
Surendra Dasari ◽  
Emilie Anderson ◽  
Shaji Kumar ◽  
Taxiarchis V. Kourelis

AbstractImmunotherapy has shown efficacy in relapsed multiple myeloma (MM). However, these therapies may depend on a functional tumor immune microenvironment (iTME) for their efficacy. Characterizing the evolution of the iTME over the disease course is necessary to optimize the timing of immunotherapies. We performed mass cytometry, cytokine analysis, and RNA sequencing on bone marrow samples from 39 (13 newly diagnosed [NDMM], 11 relapsed pre-daratumumab exposure [RMM], and 13 triple-refractory [TRMM]) MM patients. Three distinct cellular iTME clusters were identified; cluster 1 comprised mainly of NDMM and RMM patients; and clusters 2 and 3 comprised primarily of TRMM patients. We showed that naive T cells were decreased in clusters 2 and 3, cluster 2 was characterized by increased senescent T cells, and cluster 3 by decreased early memory T cells. Plasma cells in clusters 2 and 3 upregulated E2F transcription factors and MYC proliferation pathways, and downregulated interferon, TGF-beta, interleuking-6, and TNF-αlpha signaling pathways compared to cluster 1. This study suggests that the MM iTME becomes increasingly dysfunctional with therapy whereas the MM clone may be less dependent on inflammation-mediated growth pathways and less sensitive to IFN-mediated immunosurveillance. Our findings may explain the decreased sensitivity of TRMM patients to novel immunotherapies.


2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Yan Zhang ◽  
Xianwu Chen ◽  
Qinghe Fu ◽  
Feifan Wang ◽  
Xuejian Zhou ◽  
...  

Abstract Background Increasing evidence has indicated that pyroptosis could regulate the tumor immune microenvironment (TIME) to affect the tumor development. As a highly immunogenic tumor, clear cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC) can benefit from immunotherapy, but related research on pyroptosis in the TIME of ccRCC is still deficient. Methods Available data derived from TCGA and GEO databases were analyzed to identify the different expression profiles of pyroptosis in ccRCC and normal tissues, and the correlation of pyroptosis regulators with TIME was evaluated in ccRCC. Results According to consensus clustering analysis, two differential expression levels of subtypes were identified to affect patient prognosis, and were related to histological tumor stage and grade. Immune cells were calculated by the CIBERSORT algorithm. Higher infiltrated levels of B cells naive, T cells CD4 memory resting, NK cells resting, monocytes, macrophages were observed in Cluster 1, while higher infiltrated levels of CD8+ T cells, T follicular helper cells, and Tregs were observed in Cluster 2. Gene set enrichment analysis indicated that Cluster 2 was enriched in multiple immune-related pathways, including the JAK-STAT signaling pathway. Moreover, overexpression of eight immune checkpoints was related to ccRCC development, especially in Cluster 2. As four potentially key pyroptosis regulators, AIM2, CASP5, NOD2, and GZMB were confirmed to be upregulated in ccRCC by RT-qPCR analysis and further verified by the HPA database. Further pan-cancer analysis suggested that these four pyroptosis regulators were differentially expressed and related to the TIME in multiple cancers. Conclusion The present study provided a comprehensive view of pyroptosis regulators in the TIME of ccRCC, which may provide potential value for immunotherapy.


2021 ◽  
Vol 39 (15_suppl) ◽  
pp. e15100-e15100
Author(s):  
Jiaan Ye ◽  
Longgang Cui ◽  
Xiaochen Zhao ◽  
Guanghui Lan

e15100 Background: Cancer treatment has entered the era of immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICI), but different tumors have different responses to ICI drugs. For example, non-small cell lung cancer and melanoma have higher response rates to ICIs than colorectal cancer and liver cancer patients. Previous studies have shown that tumor immune microenvironment have a great impact on the efficacy of ICI. Methods: This study retrospectively included pan-cancer patient specimens, using multiple fluorescent labeling immunohistochemistry to explore the differences in the immune microenvironment of different tumors. Shapiro-Wilk was used for normality test, and ANOVA or Kruskal Wallis test was used according to the results. Two-sided P < 0.05 was considered a significant difference. Results: The study included 308 patients, including 119 (38.6%) NSCLC patients, 72 (23.4%) Colorectal cancer patients, 51 (16.6%) Hepatobiliary cancer patients and 66 (21.4%) Others types of cancer patients. Among them, there was 192 (62.3%) Male, and 116 (37.7%) Female, and the median age was 57 (50-66). The proportion of CD8+ T cells and natural killer cell in tumor was statistically different. The proportion of CD8+ T cells in NSCLC, Colorectal cancer, Hepatobiliary cancer and others was 2.16%, 1%, 1.77% and 2.63%, p < 0.01; the proportion of natural killer cell was 16.44 %, 4.91%, 5.58% and 3.29%, p < 0.01. Conclusions: Different tumor types have different immune microenvironments. These results may provide valuable clues for future ICI trail design.


2021 ◽  
Vol 39 (15_suppl) ◽  
pp. e12573-e12573
Author(s):  
Yoshihisa Tokumaru ◽  
Masanori Oshi ◽  
Vijayashree Murthy ◽  
Eriko Katsuta ◽  
Nobuhisa Matsuhashi ◽  
...  

e12573 Background: In breast cancer patients, it is well known that the elevation of neutrophil lymphocyte ratio (NLR) in the blood are reported to associate with poor prognosis based on the notion that neutrophils represent pro-cancer, and lymphocytes represent anti-cancer immune cells. Tumor immune microenvironment has been demonstrated to play critical roles in the outcome of breast cancer patients. However, there is scarce evidence on the clinical relevance of intratumoral NLR in breast cancer patients. In the current study, we hypothesized that intratumoral NLR high tumors are associated with worse survival particularly in TNBC that is known to have high immune cell infiltration. Methods: A total of 1904 breast cancer patients’ data from METABRIC (Molecular Taxonomy of Breast Cancer International Consortium) and analyzed. NLR was calculated by the gene expressions of CD66b (CEACAM8) and CD8 (CD8A). NLR high and low were divided by the median. Overall Survival (OS) and Disease-Free Survival were calculated utilizing Kaplan Meier method between intratumoral NLR high and low groups. xCell algorithm was used to analyze the infiltrated immune cells within the tumor immune microenvironment as we have previously published. Results: Intratumoral NLR high group was associated with worse OS in whole, ER-positive/HER2-negative, and triple negative (TN) subtypes, in agreement with the previous studies. TN subtype alone demonstrated worse DFS of NLR high group. Surprisingly, gene set enrichment analysis (GSEA) demonstrated no gene set enrichment to NLR high group, which implicates that there is no distinctive mechanism that associate with worse survival. Whereas, immune response-related gene sets significantly enriched to NLR low group in TN subtype. This enrichment was consistent in ER-positive/HER2-negative. Compared with ER-positive/HER2-negative subtype, anti-cancer immune cells such as CD4+ T cells, CD8+ T cells, M1 macrophage, and helper T helper type 1 cells were significantly infiltrated in TN patients (p < 0.001 for all genes), where M2 macrophages and neutrophils were less and regulatory T cells and T helper type 2 cells were more infiltrated in TN subtype. Furthermore, intratumoral NLR was significantly lower in TN compared with ER-positive/HER2-negative subtype (p < 0.001). These results suggest that intratumoral NLR low group is associated with better survival due to favorable tumor immune microenvironment in TN subtype rather than NLR high group has worse survival. Conclusions: Intratumoral NLR low tumor demonstrated more favorable OS and more favorable DFS in TN patients. Intratumoral NLR low breast cancer was associated with enhanced immune response and higher infiltration of anti-cancer immune cells were observed in TN subtype compared to ER-positive/HER2-negative which may contribute to the favorable outcome of in TN breast cancer.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ran Li ◽  
Ying Lin ◽  
Yu Wang ◽  
Shaoyuan Wang ◽  
Yang Yang ◽  
...  

BackgroundLung squamous cell carcinoma (LUSC) is a major subtype of non-small cell lung cancer. The tumor immune microenvironment (TIME) affects the anti-tumor immune response and the patient’s prognosis, although the TIME in LUSC patients is incompletely understood.MethodsWe retrospectively collected surgical specimens from patients with previously untreated primary LUSC. Histopathological examination was used to identify tumor regions and adjacent regions, and imaging mass cytometry was used to characterize the immune cells in those regions. The results were compared between regions and between patients.ResultsWe identified heterogeneity in the TIME on comparing different patients with LUSC, although the tumor region and adjacent region both exhibited an immune response to the tumor. The TIME typically included a large number of infiltrating and activated T-cells, especially CD8+ T-cells, which closely interacted with the tumor cells in the tumor region. There was limited infiltration of B-cells, NK cells, and NKT cells, while the major immune suppressor cells were CD33+ myeloid-derived cells. We also identified a novel population of CD3−CD4+ cells with high expression of Foxp3 and TNFα, which might modulate the tumor microenvironment and play a proinflammatory role in the TIME.ConclusionsThe TIME of LUSC appears to be immunogenic and heterogenous, with predominant infiltration of activated CD8+ T-cells. The interactions between the tumor cells and T-cells facilitate the anti-tumor activity. A novel subpopulation of CD3−CD4+ cells with high TNFα and Foxp3 expression may modulate the tumor microenvironment and play a proinflammatory role.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Weiqin Jiang ◽  
Yinjun He ◽  
Wenguang He ◽  
Guosheng Wu ◽  
Xile Zhou ◽  
...  

Tumor-specific CD8+T cells are exposed to persistent antigenic stimulation which induces a dysfunctional state called “exhaustion.” Though functioning to limit damage caused by immune response, T cell exhaustion leads to attenuated effector function whereby cytotoxic CD8+T cells fail to control tumor progression in the late stage. This pathway is a dynamic process from activation to “progenitor exhaustion” through to “terminally exhaustion” with distinct properties. With the rapid development of immunotherapy via enhancing T cell function, new studies are dissecting the mechanisms and identifying specific biomarkers of dynamic differentiation during the process of exhaustion. Further, although immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) have achieved great success in clinical practice, most patients still show limited efficacy to ICIs. The expansion and differentiation of progenitor exhausted T cells explained the success of ICIs while the depletion of the progenitor T cell pool and the transient effector function of terminally exhausted T cells accounted for the failure of immune monotherapy in the context of exorbitant tumor burden. Thus, combination strategies are urgent to be utilized based on the reduction of tumor burden or the expansion of the progenitor T cell pool. In this review, we aim to introduce the concept of homeostasis of the activated and exhausted status of CD8+T cells in the tumor immune microenvironment, and present recent findings on dynamic differentiation process during T cell exhaustion and the implications for combination strategies in immune therapy.


2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (Suppl 3) ◽  
pp. A270-A270
Author(s):  
Chen Zhao ◽  
Abigail Wong-Rolle ◽  
Prajan Divakar ◽  
Katherine Calvo ◽  
Christopher Hourigan

BackgroundRelapsed or refractory Acute Myeloid Leukemia (R-AML) is a deadly disease with an inadequate response rate to current treatments. Recent advances in immunotherapy shed light on R-AML, and several clinical trials have shown promising potential for combining immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) with hypomethylating agents. A deeper understanding of the tumor-immune microenvironment in R-AML during combination ICI treatment is urgently needed for developing better therapeutics and stratifying treatment strategies.MethodsTo dissect the tumor-immune interactions in the bone marrow microenvironment, we employed nanoString GeoMx Digital Spatial Profiler (DSP) and performed a spatial-transcriptomic analysis of patients with R-AML who received pembrolizumab and decitabine. We compared the transcriptomic profiles and TCR clonalities of tumor-interacting T cells, bystander T cells, and other cells at baseline, post-pembrolizumab treatment, and post-decitabine, which enable us to identify R-AML’s suppressive immune microenvironment and immune cells’ responses to ICI and hypomethylating agent.ResultsWe obtained the spatial-transcriptomic profiles of T cells, stromal cells, and leukemia cells in patients with R-AML at different treatment points. Our TCR-specific probes were able to track T cell clonal changes during treatments.ConclusionsR-AML harbored a complex tumor immune microenvironment and diverse T cell clonality.AcknowledgementsThis research was supported in part by the Intramural Research Program of the NCI (the Center for Cancer Research), NHLBI, and NIH Clinical Center.Ethics ApprovalThis study is approved by NHLBI IRB.


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