Immune infiltrating cells in cholangiocarcinoma may become clinical diagnostic markers: based on bioinformatics analysis

Yongwei Zhang,Wei Dai,Yeben Qian,Sihan Chen,Jun Li

doi:10.1186/s12957-021-02168-8

Abstract

BackgroundIntrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma (ICC) is a malignant tumor originating from the secondary bile duct and its branch epithelium. Among primary liver tumors, the incidence of ICC is second only to hepatocellular carcinoma. Tumor microenvironment can regulate the occurrence and development of tumors. This study is dedicated to finding more markers that can diagnose ICC by finding the differential tumor microenvironment cells between ICC and normal tissues.MethodsWe wanted to study the infiltration of immune cells between the cholangiocarcinoma of the same patient and its paired non-tumor tissues, to explore the difference of immune cells in the tumor microenvironment and adjacent non-tumor tissues in the same organism. So, we searched the relevant data of patients with ICC from the GEO database and found that the GSE45001 data set meets our research needs. CIBERSORT database is used to calculate immune cell composition. Finally, perform visual analysis and data statistics to find out the differentially expressed immune cells.ResultsWe found that the expression levels of dendritic cells activated, macrophages M2, and T cells regulatory (Tregs) in ICC were higher than normal tissues, and the expression levels of macrophages M1, monocytes, and T cells follicular helper in ICC were lower than normal tissues.ConclusionThese 6 types of immune cells are expected to become molecular markers for clinical diagnosis of ICC.

Highlights

Intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma (ICC) is a malignant tumor originating from the secondary bile duct and its branch epithelium
By searching the ICC-related data set in the GEO database, we established relevant selection and exclusion criteria: (1) must be paired intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma and para-cancer tissue, (2) the quantity must be at least 10 pairs, and (3) these data sets have
The results show that the expression differences between dendritic cells activated, macrophage M1, macrophage M2, monocytes, T cells follicular helper, and T cells regulatory (Tregs) between ICC and normal tissue are statistically significant (P < 0.05) are expected to become a new diagnostic ICC marker

Summary

Introduction

Intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma (ICC) is a malignant tumor originating from the secondary bile duct and its branch epithelium. The incidence of ICC is second only to hepatocellular carcinoma. This study is dedicated to finding more markers that can diagnose ICC by finding the differential tumor microenvironment cells between ICC and normal tissues. The incidence of ICC is second only to hepatocellular carcinoma, and the incidence of ICC in China is on the rise. It was found that GSE45001 [5] (https:// www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/gds/?term=GSE45001) met the research conditions (with 10 tumor samples and 10 normal tissue samples). We put it into the CIBERSORT (https://cibersort.stanford.edu/) [6] database to analyze their immune cell composition. We found that there are some differences in the content of immune cells between ICC tissues and normal tissues, and through co-expression heat maps, violin diagrams, etc., more accurately extract the difference between tumor tissues and normal tissues

Methods

Discussion

Conclusion