Verification of Genetic Differences and Immune Cell Infiltration Subtypes in Neuroblastoma Tumor Microenvironment for Immunotherapy
Abstract Background: The tumor microenvironment (TME) has achieved remarkable results in the research of cancer progression in the past few years. it is crucial to understand the nature and function of TME in tumors because of precise treatment strategies for individual cancers having received widespread attention, including immunotherapy. The immune infiltrative profiles of neuroblastoma (NB) have not yet been completely illustrated. The purpose of this research is to analyses tumor immune cell infiltration (ICI) in the microenvironment of NB.Methods: We applied CIBERSORT and ESTIMATE algorithms to evaluate the ICI status of 438 NB samples. Three ICI models were selected and ICI scores were acquired. Subgroups with high ICI scores based on immune activation signaling pathways have better overall survival. Results: The genes of immunosuppressive glycosaminoglycan biosynthesis heparan sulfate signaling pathway were markedly enriched in the low ICI score subgroup. It was inferred that compared with low ICI NB subtypes, patients with high ICI NB subtypes were more likely to respond to immunotherapy and a better prognosis. Conclusion: Notably, our ICI scores not only provided new clinical and theoretical basis for mining NB prognostic markers related to the microenvironment, but also aided new ideas for the development of new NB precision immunotherapy methods.