scholarly journals CLEC10A is a Potential Prognostic Biomarker and Immune Regulator of Tumor Microenvironment in Breast Cancer

Author(s):  
Jincheng He ◽  
Lei Jiang ◽  
Jun Wang ◽  
Guangtao Min ◽  
Xiangwen Wang ◽  
...  

Abstract The communication between tumor cells and immune cells influences the ecology of the tumor microenvironment in breast cancer, as well as the disease progression and clinical outcome. The aim of this study was to investigate the prognostic value of the immunomodulatory factor CLEC10A in breast cancer. We applied the CIBERSORT and ESTIMATE calculation methods to calculate the proportion of tumor-infiltrating immune cells (TICs) and the amount of immune and stromal components in 1053 BRCA cases from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database. The differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were analyzed by COX regression analysis and protein-protein interaction (PPI) network construction. Then, CLEC10A was identified as a prognostic factor by the intersection analysis of univariate COX and PPI. Further analysis revealed that CLEC10A expression was negatively correlated with the clinical pathologic characteristics (age, clinical stage) and positively correlated with survival of BRCA patients. Gene set enrichment analysis (GSEA) showed that genes in the high CLEC10A expression group were mainly enriched in immune-related activities. Genes in the low CLEC10A expression group were enriched in biochemical functions. CIBERSORT analysis of the proportion of TICs revealed that Macrophages M1, B cells memory, B cells naive, T cells CD4+ memory activated, T cells CD8+, and T cells gamma delta were positively correlated with CLEC10A expression, and Macrophages M0, Macrophages M2, Neutrophils, and NK cells resting were positively correlated with CLEC10A expression was negatively correlated, suggesting that CLEC10A may be an important factor in the immune regulation of the tumor microenvironment, especially in mediating the anti-tumor immune response of tumor-infiltrating immune cells at the tumor initiation stage. Therefore, CLEC10A expression may contribute to the prognosis of BRCA patients and provide a new idea for the immunotherapy of BRCA.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lijun Ning ◽  
Yuqing Yan ◽  
Tianying Tong ◽  
Ziyun Gao ◽  
Zhe Cui ◽  
...  

Abstract Background: As tumor microenvironment (TME) play an indispensable role in tumorigenesis of colorectal cancer, this study performs a bunch of bioinformatics analysis to identify the indicator of the status of TME in Colorectal cancer (CRC). Results: In the presented study, we applied CIBERSORT and ESTIMATE computational methods to calculate the proportion of tumor-infiltrating immune cells (TICs) and the amount of immune and stromal components in 444 COAD-READ cases from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database. The differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were analyzed by COX regression analysis and protein–protein interaction (PPI) network construction. Then, fatty acid-binding protein four ( FABP4 ) was determined as a predictive factor by the intersection analysis of univariate COX and PPI. Further analysis revealed that FABP4 expression was positively correlated with the clinical pathologic characteristics (clinical stage, distant metastasis) and negatively correlated with the survival of CRC patients. Gene Set Enrichment Analysis (GSEA) showed that the genes in the high-expression FABP4 group were mainly enriched in immune-related activities. In the low-expression FABP4 group, the genes were enriched in metabolic pathways. CIBERSORT analysis for the proportion of TICs revealed that NK cell, CD4 + T cells and CD8 + T cells were negatively correlated with FABP4 expression, suggesting that FABP4 might be a potential prognostic factor of CRC patients. Conclusion: Our study has developed a new biomarker (FABP4) that can predict the status of tumor microenvironment in Colorectal cancer. Keywords: FABP4, tumor microenvironment, ESTIMATE, CIBERSORT, colorectal cancer


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yizhou Huang ◽  
Lizhi Chen ◽  
Ziyi Tang ◽  
Yu Min ◽  
Wanli Yu ◽  
...  

BackgroundBreast cancer (BC) is the most frequent cancer in women. The tumor microenvironment (TME), consisting of blood vessels, immune cells, fibroblasts, and extracellular matrix, plays a pivotal role in tumorigenesis and progression. Increasing evidence has emphasized the importance of TME, especially the immune components, in patients with BC. Nevertheless, we still lack a deep understanding of the correlation between tumor invasion and TME status.MethodsTranscriptome and clinical data were retrieved from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database. ESTIMATE algorithm was applied for quantifying stromal and immune scores. Then we screened out the differentially expressed genes (DEGs) through the intersection analysis. Furthermore, the establishment of protein-protein interaction (PPI) network and univariate COX regression analysis were utilized to determine the core genes in DEGs. In addition, we also performed Gene Set Enrichment Analysis (GSEA) and CIBERSORT analysis to distinguish the function of crucial gene expression and the proportion of tumor-infiltrating immune cells (TICs), respectively.ResultsA total of 1178 samples (112 normal samples and 1066 tumor samples) were extracted from TCGA for calculation, and 226 DEGs were obtained from this assessment. Further intersection analysis revealed eight key genes, including ITK, CD3E, CCL19, CD2, SH2D1A, CD5, SLAMF6, SPN, which were proven to correlate with BC status. Moreover, ITK was picked out for further study. The results illustrated that high expression of BC patients had a more prolonged overall survival (OS) time than ITK low expression BC patients (p = 0.009), and ITK expression also presented the statistical significance in age, TNM staging, tumor size classification, and metastasis classification. Additionally, GSEA and CIBERSORT analysis indicated that ITK expression had an association with immune activity in TME.ConclusionITK may be a potential indicator for prognosis prediction in patients with BC, and its biological behavior may promote our understanding of the molecular mechanism of tumor progression and targeted therapy.


2021 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wenting Liu ◽  
Kaiting Jiang ◽  
Jingya Wang ◽  
Ting Mei ◽  
Min Zhao ◽  
...  

BackgroundGlucosamine 6-phosphate N-acetyltransferase (GNPNAT1) is a key enzyme in the hexosamine biosynthetic pathway (HBP), which functions as promoting proliferation in some tumors, yet its potential biological function and mechanism in lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD) have not been explored.MethodsThe mRNA differential expression of GNPNAT1 in LUAD and normal tissues was analyzed using the Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database and validated by real-time PCR. The clinical value of GNPNAT1 in LUAD was investigated based on the data from the TCGA database. Then, immunohistochemistry (IHC) of GNPNAT1 was applied to verify the expression and clinical significance in LUAD from the protein level. The relationship between GNPNAT1 and epigenetics was explored using the cBioPortal database, and the miRNAs regulating GNPNAT1 were found using the miRNA database. The association between GNPNAT1 expression and tumor-infiltrating immune cells in LUAD was observed through the Tumor IMmune Estimation Resource (TIMER). Finally, Gene set enrichment analysis (GSEA) was used to explore the biological signaling pathways involved in GNPNAT1 in LUAD.ResultsGNPNAT1 was upregulated in LUAD compared with normal tissues, which was verified through qRT-PCR in different cell lines (P < 0.05), and associated with patients’ clinical stage, tumor size, and lymphatic metastasis status (all P < 0.01). Kaplan–Meier (KM) analysis suggested that patients with upregulated GNPNAT1 had a relatively poor prognosis (P < 0.0001). Furthermore, multivariate Cox regression analysis indicated that GNPNAT1 was an independent prognostic factor for LUAD (OS, TCGA dataset: HR = 1.028, 95% CI: 1.013–1.044, P < 0.001; OS, validation set: HR = 1.313, 95% CI: 1.130–1.526, P < 0.001). GNPNAT1 overexpression was correlated with DNA copy amplification (P < 0.0001), low DNA methylation (R = −0.52, P < 0.0001), and downregulation of hsa-miR-30d-3p (R = −0.17, P < 0.001). GNPNAT1 expression was linked to B cells (R = −0.304, P < 0.0001), CD4+T cells (R = −0.218, P < 0.0001), and dendritic cells (R = −0.137, P = 0.002). Eventually, GSEA showed that the signaling pathways of the cell cycle, ubiquitin-mediated proteolysis, mismatch repair and p53 were enriched in the GNPNAT1 overexpression group.ConclusionGNPNAT1 may be a potential prognostic biomarker and novel target for intervention in LUAD.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mu Chen ◽  
Bingsong Huang ◽  
Lei Zhu ◽  
Kui Chen ◽  
Hao Lian ◽  
...  

Abstract Background: Tumor-infiltrating immune cells (TIICs), which play a pivotal role in the tumor microenvironment, are intimately related to tumor progression and clinical outcome. It remains unclear which factors influence tumor immune infiltration in lower-grade gliomas (LGGs). TEAD4 (TEA Domain Transcription Factor 4) is an essential member of the Hippo pathway that is involved in cancer progression, epithelial-mesenchymal transition, metastasis, and cancer stem cell function across multiple types of cancers. However, the prognostic value of TEAD4 and its association with TIICs in LGG have been hardly studied. Methods: LGG data were obtained from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and Chinese Glioma Genome Atlas (CGGA). TEAD4 expression between different groups was compared by R and survival analysis was implemented by Kaplan–Meier curves. In Virto experiments were conducted to investigate the role of TEAD4 in glioma cells. Gene set enrichment analysis (GSEA) and protein-protein interaction (PPI) network were used to investigate the differential biological processes and signaling pathways. Multiple computational methods were employed to estimate the association between TEAD4 expression and tumor microenvironment in LGG. Correlations were analyzed by Spearman correlationResults: TEAD4 expression was up-regulated in higher-grade gliomas and correlated with a poorer clinical outcome. Glioma cell proliferation and migration were promoted by TEAD4 overexpression. GSEA and PPI network indicated that multiple immune-related pathways and hub genes were closely associated with TEAD4 expression in LGG specimens. TEAD4 expression was negatively associated with glioma purity. Multivariate Cox regression analysis indicated that TEAD4 expression and tumor purity were independent prognostic factors in LGG. TEAD4 expression was positively correlated with the infiltration of multiple immune cells, including plasma cells, CD8+ T cells, and macrophages M1 and M2. Correlation analysis showed that the TEAD4 level can predict the efficacy of immune checkpoint blockade therapy. Conclusions: TEAD4 is highly related to glioma malignancy grades and multiple immune cell infiltration, suggesting TEAD4 can serve as a new biomarker for anti-cancer therapies in LGG.


2020 ◽  
Vol 38 (15_suppl) ◽  
pp. e12584-e12584
Author(s):  
Yoshihisa Tokumaru ◽  
Lan Le ◽  
Masanori Oshi ◽  
Eriko Katsuta ◽  
Nobuhisa Matsuhashi ◽  
...  

e12584 Background: Recent studies have shown that infiltrating T-lymphocytes have been implicated in the promotion of breast cancer progression. Upon activation, these antigen-presenting cells then recruit adaptive immune cells. It has been proposed that polarization of CD4+ effector T-cells towards the immunosuppressive Th2 cells induce cytokine release and T-cell anergy, which lead to polarization of M2 tumor-associated macrophages (TAM’s), providing a protumorigenic microenvironment. We hypothesized that there is a correlation between high levels of Th2 cells and aggressive features of breast cancer and unfavorable tumor immune environment. Methods: Clinicopathological data and overall survival information was obtained on 1069 breast cancer patients from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database. We defined Th2 high and low levels with the median cutoff. Results: Analysis of cell composition of the immune cells within tumor immune microenvironment demonstrated that Th2 high tumors did not consistently associated with unfavorable tumor immune microenvironment. Pro-cancer immune cells, such as macrophage M2 cells were increased with Th2 high tumors whereas, regulatory T cells were decreased with Th2 high tumors (p < 0.01 and p < 0.001 respectively). On the contrary, infiltration of anti-cancer cells, such as macrophage M1 was increased whereas CD8 T cells were decreased with Th2 high tumors (p < 0.05 and p < 0.001 respectively). Th2 was not shown to have correlation with IL-4, IL-6, IL-10 and IL-13, all of which has been reported to associate with Th2 cells. Th2 levels were associated with advanced grades. Also, correlation analysis demonstrated that there was a strong correlation between Th2 levels and Ki-67. These results were further validated with gene set enrichment analysis (GSEA). GSEA revealed that in Th2 high tumors enriched the gene sets associated with cell proliferation and cell cycle. Conclusions: High expression of immunosuppressive Th2 cells was associated with highly proliferative features of breast cancer, but not with unfavorable tumor immune microenvironment.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Zhiquan Xu ◽  
Ling Xiang ◽  
Rong Wang ◽  
Yongfu Xiong ◽  
He Zhou ◽  
...  

Background. Currently, immunotherapy is widely used for breast cancer (BC) patients, and tumor mutation burden (TMB) is regarded as a valuable independent predictor of response to immunotherapy. However, specific gene mutations and their relationship with TMB and tumor-infiltrating immune cells in BC are not fully understood. Methods. Comprehensive bioinformatic analyses were performed using data from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC) datasets. Survival curves were analyzed via Kaplan-Meier analysis. Univariate and multivariate Cox regression analyses were used for prognosis analysis. Gene set enrichment analysis (GSEA) was performed to explore regulatory mechanisms and functions. The CIBERSORT algorithm was used to calculate the tumor-infiltrating immune cell fractions. Results. We analyzed somatic mutation data of BC from TCGA and ICGC datasets and found that 19 frequently mutated genes were reported in both cohorts, namely, SPTA1, TTN, MUC17, MAP3K1, CDH1, FAT3, SYNE1, FLG, HMCN1, RYR2 (ryanodine receptor 2), GATA3, MUC4, PIK3CA, KMT2C, TP53, PTEN, ZFHX4, MUC16, and USH2A. Among them, we observed that RYR2 mutation was significantly associated with higher TMB and better clinical prognosis. Moreover, GSEA revealed that RYR2 mutation-enriched signaling pathways were related to immune-associated pathways. Furthermore, based on the CIBERSORT algorithm, we found that RYR2 mutation enhanced the antitumor immune response by enriching CD8+ T cells, activated memory CD4+ T cells, and M1 macrophages. Conclusion. RYR2 is frequently mutated in BC, and its mutation is related to increased TMB and promotes antitumor immunity; thus, RYR2 may serve as a valuable biomarker to predict the immune response.


2021 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhengjie Xu ◽  
Suxiao Jiang ◽  
Juan Ma ◽  
Desheng Tang ◽  
Changsheng Yan ◽  
...  

Background: Breast cancer (BC) is a heterogeneous malignant tumor, leading to the second major cause of female mortality. This study aimed to establish an in-depth relationship between ferroptosis-related LncRNA (FRlncRNA) and the prognosis as well as immune microenvironment of the patients with BC.Methods: We downloaded and integrated the gene expression data and the clinical information of the patients with BC from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database. The co-expression network analysis and univariate Cox regression analysis were performed to screen out the FRlncRNAs related to prognosis. A cluster analysis was adopted to explore the difference of immune microenvironment between the clusters. Furthermore, we determined the optimal survival-related FRLncRNAs for final signature by LASSO Cox regression analysis. Afterward, we constructed and validated the prediction models, which were further tested in different subgroups.Results: A total of 31 FRLncRNAs were filtrated as prognostic biomarkers. Two clusters were determined, and C1 showed better prognosis and higher infiltration level of immune cells, such as B cells naive, plasma cells, T cells CD8, and T cells CD4 memory activated. However, there were no significantly different clinical characters between the clusters. Gene Set Enrichment Analysis (GSEA) revealed that some metabolism-related pathways and immune-associated pathways were exposed. In addition, 12 FRLncRNAs were determined by LASSO analysis and used to construct a prognostic signature. In both the training and testing sets, patients in the high-risk group had a worse survival than the low-risk patients. The area under the curves (AUCs) of receiver operator characteristic (ROC) curves were about 0.700, showing positive prognostic capacity. More notably, through the comprehensive analysis of heatmap, we regarded LINC01871, LINC02384, LIPE-AS1, and HSD11B1-AS1 as protective LncRNAs, while LINC00393, AC121247.2, AC010655.2, LINC01419, PTPRD-AS1, AC099329.2, OTUD6B-AS1, and LINC02266 were classified as risk LncRNAs. At the same time, the patients in the low-risk groups were more likely to be assigned to C1 and had a higher immune score, which were consistent with a better prognosis.Conclusion: Our research indicated that the ferroptosis-related prognostic signature could be used as novel biomarkers for predicting the prognosis of BC. The differences in the immune microenvironment exhibited by BC patients with different risks and clusters suggested that there may be a complementary synergistic effect between ferroptosis and immunotherapy.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bolun Zhang ◽  
Feng Guan ◽  
Bin Dai ◽  
Guangtong Zhu ◽  
Beibei Mao ◽  
...  

Abstract BackgroundIn the glioma microenvironment, infiltrating immune cells has been shown to possess beneficial effects for tumor progression. Immune cells and stromal cells dominate the tumor microenvironment in glioma. The complex interplay between the tumor progression with immune cells or stromal cells was still unknown. MethodsIn this study, we used Estimation of stromal and immune cells in malignant tumor tissues using expression data (ESTIMATE) calculations to calculate the proportion of tumour-infiltrating immune cells (TIC) and the number of immune and stromal components in glioma cases from the cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and the Chinese Glioma Genome Atlas (CGGA) databases. Differentially expressed genes (DEG) were analyzed by COX regression analysis and protein-protein interaction (PPI) network construction. Then, JAK3, IL2RB and CD3E were identified as predictors by the intersection analysis of univariate COX and PPI, and further analysis showed that the expression of them were positively correlated with survival and clinicopathological characteristics of glioma patients. Finally, the Cell type Identification By Estimating Relative Subsets Of known RNA Transcripts (CIBERSORT) deconvolution algorithm was applied to quantify the fraction and infiltration of 22 types of immune cells in glioma. ResultsOur results showed that ESTIMATEScores Were Correlated with the Survival of glioma Patients, DEGs Shared by ImmuneScore and StromalScore were predominantly presented as the enrichment of immune-related genes gene set enrichment analysis (GSEA). The intersection analysis of PPI network and univariate COX regression enabled us to identify three genes (JAK3, IL2RB and CD3E) that had never been reported before, whose expression was correlated with clinical characteristics such as survival and WHO grading of these patients. CITICSORT analysis of TIC ratio showed that B cell memory and CD8 + T cells were positively correlated with JAK3, IL2RB and CD3E expression, suggesting that these genes may be responsible for maintaining the immunodominant state of TME. CIBERSORT analysis for the proportion of TICs revealed that the levels of JAK3, IL2RB and CD3E affected the immune activity of TME.ConclusionOur results confirmed that the JAK3, IL2RB and CD3E can be used as diagnostic and prognostic biomarkers for glioma and may be used as therapeutic targets in the future.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yucheng Qian ◽  
Lina Zhang ◽  
Jihang Wen ◽  
Yanxia Mei ◽  
Jingsun Wei ◽  
...  

Abstract ColorColorectal cancer is one of the most common cancer worldwide. Recently, tumor microenvironment (TME), especially its remoulding , is thought to control the colorectal cancer genesis and progression. In this study, we use ESTIMATEscore to make out the proportion of immune and stromal components in colorectal adenocarcinoma (CRA) samples from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database. The differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were found by COX regression analysis and protein-protein interaction (PPI) network, among which TGFβ1 was supposed to be a prognosis factor and tumor environment indicator. Continuous analysis showed that TGFβ1 expression is positively correlated with lymph node metastasis (N stage) but negatively correlated with survival. Gene Set Enrichment Analysis (GSEA) revealed that the genes of the high-expression TGFβ1 group were mainly enriched in immune-related activities. Cluster analysis divided the samples into 2 subgroups. 24 HLA-related genes and 8 immune checkpoint genes were found upregulated in the high immunity group as well as TGFβ1, which suggests the possibility of novel therapies targeting immune checkpoints combined with TGFβ1. Tumor-infiltrating immune cell (TIC) profile of CRA patients was described by CIBERSORT analysis. Further analysis showed that the infiltration of Tregs and Neutrophils were positively correlated with TGFβ1 high expression. Then 3 TGFβ1-related genes were picked out to construct a prognostic model, which matches the survival data well.


2020 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bingnan Chen ◽  
Di Wang ◽  
Jiapo Li ◽  
Yue Hou ◽  
Chong Qiao

BackgroundEndometrioid endometrial adenocarcinoma (EEA) is one of the most common tumors in the female reproductive system. With the further understanding of immune regulation mechanism in tumor microenvironment, immunotherapy is emerging in tumor treatment. However, there are few systematic studies on EEA immune infiltration.MethodsIn this study, prognostic tumor-infiltrating immune cells (TIICs) and related genes of EEA were comprehensively analyzed for the first time through the bioinformatics method with CIBERSORT algorithm as the core. Gene expression profile data were downloaded from the TCGA database, and the abundance ratio of TIICs was obtained. Kaplan–Meier analysis and Cox regression analysis were used to identify prognostic TIICs. EEA samples were grouped according to the risk score in Cox regression model. Differential analysis and functional enrichment analyses were performed on high- and low-risk groups to find survival-related hub genes, which were verified by Tumor Immune Estimation Resource (TIMER).ResultFour TIICs including memory CD4+ T cells, regulatory T cells, natural killer cells and dendritic cells were identified. And two hub gene modules were found, in which six hub genes including APOL1, CCL17, RBP4, KRT15, KRT71, and KRT79 were significantly related to overall survival and were closely correlated with some certain TIICs in the validation of TIMER.ConclusionIn this study, four prognostic TIICs and six hub genes were found to be closely related to EEA. These findings provided new potential targets for EEA immunotherapy.


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