Screening and Identification of Prognostic Tumor-Infiltrating Immune Cells and Genes of Endometrioid Endometrial Adenocarcinoma: Based on The Cancer Genome Atlas Database and Bioinformatics

Bingnan Chen; Di Wang; Jiapo Li; Yue Hou; Chong Qiao

doi:10.3389/fonc.2020.554214

Screening and Identification of Prognostic Tumor-Infiltrating Immune Cells and Genes of Endometrioid Endometrial Adenocarcinoma: Based on The Cancer Genome Atlas Database and Bioinformatics

Front Oncol. 2020 Dec 1:10:554214. doi: 10.3389/fonc.2020.554214. eCollection 2020.

Authors

Bingnan Chen^{1

2}, Di Wang³, Jiapo Li^{1

2}, Yue Hou^{1

2}, Chong Qiao^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Shengjing Hospital of China Medical University, Shenyang, China.
² Key Laboratory of Obstetrics and Gynecology of Higher Education of Liaoning Province, Shenyang, China.
³ Department of Internal Medicine, Shengjing Hospital of China Medical University, Shenyang, China.

Abstract

Background: Endometrioid 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.

Methods: In 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).

Result: Four 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.

Conclusion: In 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.

Keywords: The Cancer Genome Atlas; bioinformatics; endometrioid endometrial adenocarcinoma; prognosis; tumor-infiltrating immune cells.