Background: The response rate and survival benefit of immunotherapy vary among patients, implying specific immune status of an individual could be associated with the effect of immunotherapy. However, in-depth studies of immune subtypes (ISs), immune landscape and tumour microenvironment of oesophageal cancer (ESCA) and their clinical implications are less reported.
Methods: We first accessed data from publicly available databases and preprocessed it based on a standard protocol. Then, ISs were identified by unsupervised learning. Thereafter, the association of these ISs and tumour mutation burden (TMB), biomarkers of chemotherapy-induced immune response, tumour markers were also assessed. In addition, the immune characteristics, immune landscape, co-expression network of immune genes, and clinical implications were visualized and analysed.
Results: We identified three immunoclusters based on immune-associated genes with intra-class heterogeneity and prognostic value. Cluster-specific associations with TMB, markers of chemotherapy-induced immune response, and tumour markers were revealed. A 4-gene signature (risk score= -0.16514291×BHLHE22-0.03964046×MXRA8-0.15242778×SLIT2-0.05553572×SPON1) based on co-expressed genes in the immunoclusters was developed and externally validated.
Conclusions: In summary, we identified clinically relevant immunoclusters in both adenocarcinoma and squamous cell carcinoma of oesophagus, revealing the necessity of assessing the complexity and diversity of immune microenvironment for cancer immunotherapy.
Keywords: Immunophenotyping; immune landscape; immunotherapy; oesophageal cancer tumour microenvironment.