Positive Correlation Between LTA Expression and Overall Immune Activity Suggests an Increased Probability of Survival in Uterine Corpus Endometrial Carcinoma

作者：Mingjie Shi, Fei Luo, Taotao Shao, Hengli Zhang, Taili Yang, Yue Wei, Riling Chen, Runmin Guo · 发表于：Frontiers in Cell and Developmental Biology · 年份：2022 · DOI：10.3389/fcell.2021.793793 · 被引用次数：23 · 研究领域：Cancer-related molecular mechanisms research、Endometrial and Cervical Cancer Treatments、Ferroptosis and cancer prognosis

Mounting evidence indicates that immune status plays a crucial role in tumor progress and metastasis, while there are no effective and easily assayed biomarkers to reflect it in uterine corpus endometrial carcinoma (UCEC) patients. Here, we attempted to identify the potential biomarkers that were differentially expressed between normal and tumor tissues and involved in prognosis and immune microenvironment of UCEC patients. RNA-seq data with relevant clinical information were obtained from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA). ssGSEA algorithm was applied to calculate the enrichment scores of every tumor infiltration lymphocyte (TIL) set in each sample, and patients were then divided into three clusters using multiple R packages. Cox analysis, ESTIMATE, and CIBERSORT were utilized to determine the differentially expressed immune-related genes (DEIGs) with overall survival, and to explore their roles in prognosis, immune microenvironment, and immunotherapeutic response. The TIMER and TISIDB databases were utilized to predict the effectiveness of immunotherapy in UCEC patients. LTA was finally identified to be significantly upregulated in tumor tissues and closely associated with prognosis and immunological status, which was then verified in GSE17025. In multivariate analysis, the hazard ratio of LTA was 0.42 with 95% CI (0.22–0.80) (p = 0.008). Patients with high LTA expression had better survival and apparently immune-activated phenotypes, such as more tumor mutation burden (TMB), ...