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Research Paper|Volume 12, Issue 22|pp 22509—22526

Comprehensive characterization of the tumor microenvironment for assessing immunotherapy outcome in patients with head and neck squamous cell carcinoma

Jian Zhang1, Xi Zhong2, Huali Jiang3, Hualong Jiang4, Tao Xie1, Yunhong Tian1, Rong Li1, Baiyao Wang1, Jiexia Zhang5, Yawei Yuan1
  • 1Department of Radiation Oncology, Affiliated Cancer Hospital & Institute of Guangzhou Medical University, State Key Laboratory of Respiratory Diseases, Guangzhou Institute of Respiratory Disease, Guangzhou, 510095, P. R. China
  • 2Department of Radiation, Affiliated Cancer Hospital & Institute of Guangzhou Medical University, Guangzhou, 510095, P. R. China
  • 3Department of Cardiovascularology, Tungwah Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University, Dongguan, 523000, P. R. China
  • 4Department of Urology, Tungwah Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University, Dongguan, 523000, P. R. China
  • 5State Key Laboratory of Respiratory Disease, National Clinical Research Center for Respiratory Disease, Guangzhou Institute of Respiratory Health, the First Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou Medical University, Guangzhou, 510120, P. R. China
* Equal contribution
Received: February 21, 2020Accepted: May 27, 2020Published: November 18, 2020
https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.103460

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

The tumor microenvironment (TME) constitutes a complex milieu of cells and cytokines that maintain equilibrium between tumor progression and prognosis. However, comprehensive analysis of the TME and its clinical significance in head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) remains to be unreported. In this study, based on large-scale RNA sequencing data pertaining to single nucleotide variants (SNVs) and copy number variations (CNVs) in HNSCC patients from The Cancer Genome Atlas database, we analysed subpopulations of infiltrating immune cells and evaluated the role of TME infiltration pattern (TME score) in assessing immunotherapy outcome. TME signature genes involved in several inflammation and immunity signalling pathways were observed in the TME score subtype, which were considered immunosuppressive and potentially responsible for significantly worse prognosis. In comparison with SNV- and CNV-mediated tumor mutation burden, TME score can significantly differentiate between high- and low-risk HNSCC and predict immunotherapy outcome. Our data provide clarity on the comprehensive landscape of interactions between clinical characteristics of HNSCC and tumor-infiltrating immune cells. TME score seems to be a useful biomarker that can predict immunotherapy outcome in HNSCC patients.