Tumor-Infiltrating Leukocyte Compositions and Prognostic Immune-Related Genes in Pancreatic Cancer.
Abstract Background:Pancreatic cancer (PC) is one of the most common cancers,which has poor prognosis.At present, abundant genetic PC samples can be obtained from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database to finish comprehensive and reliable immunogenomic analysis. Thus, there is an urgent need to systematically explore the immunogenome of PC to obtain good prognosis.Methods: In this study, according to TCGA and The Genotype-Tissue Expression (GTEx) databases, we investigated the different compositions of leukocytes between PC and normal pancreas tissues, and analyzed the expressions of immune-related genes (IRGs) and the overall survival (OS) of 178 PC patients. Subsequently, computational difference algorithm and COX regression analyses were employed to assess the differentially expressed and OS-related IRGs in PC patients. Moreover, the underlying action mechanisms and properties of these IRGs were investigated by using computational biology. Finally, multivariable COX analysis was used to develop a novel prognostic biomarker for PC according to these IRGs.Results:The results showed that CD4+ memory T cells and M0 macrophages were more common and highly dominated in PC tissues relative to the non-tumor tissues. Functional enrichment analysis demonstrated that the differentially expressed and OS‐related IRGs were actively involved in the PI3K-Akt signaling pathway. A prognostic signature according to these differentially expressed IRGs (CD2AP, IL20RB, MYEOV, NUSAP1, PCDH1, RAB27B, TNFSF10, TOP2A, TPX2, TYK2, WNT7A and BUB1B) was moderately used for prognostic predictions. Further study indicated that RAB27B was negatively related to CD4 T cells while TYK2 was positively correlated with CD4 T cells. Conclusions: Taken together, this study screened several significant IRGs, demonstrated the drivers of immune repertoire, and indicated the importance of these PC-specific IRGs in the prognosis of PC.