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Research Paper|Volume 11, Issue 22|pp 10154—10166

Prognostic genes in the tumor microenvironment in cervical squamous cell carcinoma

Xin-Bin Pan1, Yan Lu2, Jian-Li Huang2, Ying Long2, De-Sheng Yao2
  • 1Department of Radiation Oncology, Guangxi Medical University Cancer Hospital, Nanning, Guangxi 530021, P.R. China
  • 2Department of Gynecologic Oncology, Guangxi Medical University Cancer Hospital, Nanning, Guangxi 530021, P.R. China
Received: August 13, 2019Accepted: October 28, 2019Published: November 18, 2019
https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.102429

Copyright © 2019 Pan et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Abstract

Cervical squamous cell carcinoma (CSCC) is one of the most commonly occurring gynecological malignancies. Because CSCC is a biologically heterogeneous disease, its prognosis varies. Therefore, identifying prognostic biomarkers that reflect its biological heterogeneity could lead to better interventions for patients with a poor prognosis. This study used the ESTIMATE algorithm to identify immune related prognostic genes within the tumor microenvironment of CSCC. The results revealed that high immune scores were associated with better overall survival (P = 0.029). Differential expression analysis revealed 384 intersection genes influencing both the immune and stromal scores. Gene Ontology and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes analyses showed the 384 intersection genes to be mainly enriched for T cell activation, the region of the membrane, carbohydrate binding, and cytokine-cytokine receptor interaction. Among them, 149 immune genes were predictive of overall survival in CSCC. These findings provide a more comprehensive understanding of immune genes within the tumor microenvironment as well as a list of immune genes prognostic in CSCC.