Han Junwei, Yang Yang, Li Xiangmei, Wu Jiashuo, Sheng Yuqi, Qiu Jiayue, Wang Qian, Li Ji, He Yalan, Cheng Liang, Zhang Yan
College of Bioinformatics Science and Technology, Harbin Medical University, China.
School of Life Science and Technology, Computational Biology Research Center, Harbin Institute of Technology, China.
Mol Oncol. 2022 Jun;16(11):2153-2173. doi: 10.1002/1878-0261.13203. Epub 2022 Mar 12.
The processes of cancer initiation, progression, and response to therapy are affected by the sex of cancer patients. Immunotherapy responses largely depend on the tumor microenvironment (TME), but how sex may shape some TME features, remains unknown. Here, we analyzed immune infiltration signatures across 19 cancer types from 1771 male and 1137 female patients in The Cancer Genome Atlas to evaluate how sex may affect the tumor mutational burden (TMB), immune scores, stromal scores, tumor purity, immune cells, immune checkpoint genes, and functional pathways in the TME. Pan-cancer analyses showed higher TMB and tumor purity scores, as well as lower immune and stromal scores in male patients as compared to female patients. Lung adenocarcinoma, lung squamous carcinoma, kidney papillary carcinoma, and head and neck squamous carcinoma showed the most significant sex biases in terms of infiltrating immune cells, immune checkpoint gene expression, and functional pathways. We further focused on lung adenocarcinoma samples in order to identify and validate sex-specific immune cell biomarkers with prognostic potential. Overall, sex may affect the tumor microenvironment, and sex-specific TME biomarkers may help tailor cancer immunotherapy in certain cancer types.
癌症的起始、进展以及对治疗的反应过程会受到癌症患者性别的影响。免疫治疗反应很大程度上取决于肿瘤微环境(TME),但性别如何塑造某些TME特征仍不清楚。在此,我们分析了来自癌症基因组图谱中1771例男性和1137例女性患者的19种癌症类型的免疫浸润特征,以评估性别如何影响肿瘤突变负担(TMB)、免疫评分、基质评分、肿瘤纯度、免疫细胞、免疫检查点基因以及TME中的功能通路。泛癌分析显示,与女性患者相比,男性患者的TMB和肿瘤纯度评分更高,而免疫和基质评分更低。肺腺癌、肺鳞状细胞癌、肾乳头状癌以及头颈部鳞状细胞癌在浸润免疫细胞、免疫检查点基因表达和功能通路方面表现出最显著的性别差异。我们进一步聚焦于肺腺癌样本,以识别和验证具有预后潜力的性别特异性免疫细胞生物标志物。总体而言,性别可能会影响肿瘤微环境,性别特异性的TME生物标志物可能有助于为某些癌症类型量身定制癌症免疫治疗。
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