Research Paper Volume 12, Issue 4 pp 3486—3501
Profiles of immune cell infiltration and immune-related genes in the tumor microenvironment of osteosarcoma
- 1 Graduate School, Guangxi University of Chinese Medicine, Nanning 530001, China
- 2 Department of Cardiology, Ruikang Hospital Affiliated to Guangxi University of Chinese Medicine, Nanning 530011, China
- 3 Department of Orthopedics, Ruikang Hospital Affiliated to Guangxi University of Chinese Medicine, Nanning 530011, China
- 4 Department of Orthopedics, Hubei University of Chinese Medicine Huangjiahu Hospital, Wuhan 430065, China
- 5 Ruikang School of Clinical Medicine, Guangxi University of Chinese Medicine, Nanning 530001, China
Received: November 11, 2019 Accepted: January 27, 2020 Published: February 9, 2020
https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.102824How to Cite
Copyright © 2020 Zhang 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
This work aimed to investigate tumor-infiltrating immune cells (TIICs) and immune-associated genes in the tumor microenvironment of osteosarcoma. An algorithm known as ESTIMATE was applied for immune score assessment, and osteosarcoma cases were assigned to the high and low immune score groups. Immune-associated genes between these groups were compared, and an optimal immune-related risk model was built by Cox regression analyses. The deconvolution algorithm (referred to as CIBERSORT) was applied to assess 22 TIICs for their amounts in the osteosarcoma microenvironment. Osteosarcoma cases with high immune score had significantly improved outcome (P<0.01). The proportions of naive B cells and M0 macrophages were significantly lower in high immune score tissues compared with the low immune score group (P<0.05), while the amounts of M1 macrophages, M2 macrophages, and resting dendritic cells were significantly higher (P<0.05). Important immune-associated genes were determined to generate a prognostic model by Cox regression analysis. Interestingly, cases with high risk score had poor outcome (P<0.01). The areas under the curve (AUC) for the risk model in predicting 1, 3 and 5-year survival were 0.634, 0.781, and 0.809, respectively. Gene set enrichment analysis suggested immunosuppression in high-risk osteosarcoma patients, in association with poor outcome.