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Research Paper|Volume 14, Issue 24|pp 10171—10216

The tumor microenvironment in gastrointestinal adenocarcinomas revealed a prognostic and immunotherapeutic biomarker

Yong Zhang1,2,3,4, Lu Li1,2,3, Feifei Chu1,2,3, Lei Zhang1,2,3, Li Zhang1,2,3, Huili Wu1,2,3, Kunkun Li1,2,3
  • 1Department of Gastroenterology, Zhengzhou Central Hospital Affiliated to Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou 450007, China
  • 2Medical Key Laboratory for Diagnosis and Treatment of Colorectal Cancer in Henan Province, Zhengzhou 450007, China
  • 3Zhengzhou Key Laboratory for Diagnosis, Treatment and Research of Colorectal Cancer, Zhengzhou 450007, China
  • 4Branch Center of Advanced Medical Research Center, Zhengzhou Central Hospital Affiliated to Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou 450007, China
* Equal contribution and co-first authors
Received: May 2, 2022Accepted: December 22, 2022Published: December 30, 2022

Copyright: © 2022 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

Accumulated evidence has elucidated that the tumor microenvironment (TME) is great of clinical significance in predicting survival outcomes and therapeutic efficacy. Nonetheless, few studies have investigated the prognostic and immunotherapeutic signature correlated with TME phenotypes in gastrointestinal adenocarcinomas (GIAC). Here, by estimating the TME pattern of immune infiltration and expression in over 1,000 GIAC patients, we revealed three TME subgroups and identified six key differential genes. To predict the TME phenotypes, TMEscore was established and validated to be an independent prognostic factor, where the high TMEscore was characterized by immune activation and response to immunotherapy and accompanied with favorable prognosis in GIAC. Furthermore, TMEscore was confirmed to predict prognosis and immunotherapeutic response in six datasets. In summary, depicting TME landscape of GIAC patients may be beneficial for interpreting survival and immunotherapeutic response, and provide new strategies for clinical treatment of GIAC.