Abstract
BackgroundImmunotherapy has become the most promising therapy in digestive system tumors besides conventional chemotherapy and radiotherapy. But only a few patients can benefit from different types of immunotherapies, such as immune checkpoint blockade (ICB). To identify these ICB-susceptible patients, methods are urgently needed to screen and profile subgroups of patients with different responsiveness to ICB.MethodsThis study carried out analysis on patients with digestive system tumors that were obtained from Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) cohorts. The analyses were mainly performed using GraphPad Prism 7 and R language.ResultsWe have quantified the microenvironmental components of eight digestive system tumor patients in TCGA cohorts and evaluated their clinical value. We re-clustered patients based on their microenvironment composition and divided these patients into six clusters. The differences between these six clusters were profiled, including survival conditions, enriched biological processes, genomic mutations, and microenvironment traits. Cluster 3 was the most immune-related cluster, exhibiting a high infiltration of non-tumor components and poor survival status, along with an inhibitory immune status, and we found that patients with high stromal score indicated a poor response in ICB cohort.ConclusionsOur research provides a new strategy based on the microenvironment components for the reclassification of digestive system tumors, which could provide guidance for prognosis judgment and treatment response prediction like ICB.
Highlights
Digestive system tumors are the most common tumor type and are associated with rapid malignant progression [1]
We first calculated the microenvironmental components of each digestive system of tumor patient through the MCP counter package and performed a visual exhibition (Figure 1A); we found that the content of fibroblasts is the most enriched, and the content of NK cells is less enriched
By drawing a heatmap, we can clearly see that in the microenvironment of digestive system tumors, stromal components like fibroblast and endothelial cells were more enriched in environment, where monocytes are the main immune component (Figure 1B)
Summary
Digestive system tumors are the most common tumor type and are associated with rapid malignant progression [1]. Even after patients receive standard radiotherapy and chemotherapy treatment, the prognosis remains poor [2, 3]. This unsatisfactory prognosis is in part due to the hidden nature of digestive system tumors, making them difficult to detect early. These tumors are often found at advanced and malignant stages, where symptoms are obvious. Only a few patients can benefit from different types of immunotherapies, such as immune checkpoint blockade (ICB). The analyses were mainly performed using GraphPad Prism 7 and R language
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