Pan-cancer analysis of NLRP3 inflammasome with potential implications in prognosis and immunotherapy in human cancer

作者：Mingyi Ju, Jia Bi, Qian Wei, Longyang Jiang, Qiutong Guan, Ming Zhang, Xinyue Song, Ting Chen, Jingyi Fan, Xiaojuan Li, Minjie Wei, Lin Zhao · 发表于：Briefings in Bioinformatics · 年份：2020 · DOI：10.1093/bib/bbaa345 · 被引用次数：194 · 研究领域：Inflammasome and immune disorders、Cancer Immunotherapy and Biomarkers、Ferroptosis and cancer prognosis

NLRP3 inflammasome was introduced as a double-edged sword in tumorigenesis and influenced immunotherapy response by modulating host immunity. However, a systematic assessment of the NLRP3-inflammasome-related genes across human cancers is lacking, and the predictive role of NLRP3 inflammasome in cancer immunotherapy (CIT) response remains unexplored. Thus, in this study, we performed a pan-cancer analysis of NLRP3-inflammasome-related genes across 24 human cancers. Out of these 24 cancers, 15 cancers had significantly different expression of NLRP3-inflammasome-related genes between normal and tumor samples. Meanwhile, Cox regression analysis showed that the NLRP3 inflammasome score could be served as an independent prognostic factor in skin cutaneous melanoma. Further analysis indicated that NLRP3 inflammasome may influence tumor immunity mainly by mediating tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes and macrophages, and the effect of NLRP3 inflammasome on immunity is diverse across tumor types in tumor microenvironment. We also found that the NLRP3 inflammasome score could be a stronger predictor for immune signatures compared with tumor mutation burden (TMB) and glycolytic activity, which have been reported as immune predictors. Furthermore, analysis of the association between NLRP3 inflammasome and CIT response using six CIT response datasets revealed the predictive value of NLRP3 inflammasome for immunotherapy response of patients in diverse cancers. Our study illustrates the charact...