Batsaki Panagiota, Fortis Sotirios P, Gritzapis Angelos D, Razou Andriana, Sakellaridis Athanasios C, Grouzi Elisavet, Moschandreou Dimitra, Koukourakis Michael I, Zoumpourlis Vassilios, Baxevanis Constantin N, Goulielmaki Maria
Cancer Immunology and Immunotherapy Center, Cancer Research Center, Saint Savas Cancer Hospital, 11522, Athens, Greece.
Department of Otorhinolaryngology/Head & Neck Surgery, Saint Savas Cancer Hospital, 11522, Athens, Greece.
Biochem Genet. 2025 Jan 8. doi: 10.1007/s10528-024-11017-8.
The tumor microenvironment has a significant input on prognosis and also for predicting clinical outcomes in various types of cancers. However, tumor tissue is not always available, thus, rendering peripheral blood a preferable alternative in the search for prognostic and predictive gene signatures. Head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) constitutes a quite heterogeneous disease characterized by poor prognosis. Therefore, the discovery of novel therapeutics based on prognostic gene signatures for effective disease governance is of paramount importance. In this study, we report for the first time an immune-gene signature identified in the peripheral blood of HNSCC patients comprising five genes (CLEC4C, IL23A, LCK, LY9, and CD19) which were more than threefold downregulated as compared to healthy individuals and were associated with poor prognosis. By performing analyses of HNSCC tumor samples from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database, we discovered that decreased expression of these genes, both as single genes and as a 5-gene signature (5-GS), was significantly correlated with worse overall survival (OS). Our data show that the levels of expression of the 5-GS represent an immune profile predicting OS in patients with HNSCC.
肿瘤微环境对各种癌症的预后及临床结果预测有着重要影响。然而，肿瘤组织并非总能获取，因此，在外周血中寻找预后和预测性基因特征成为更优选择。头颈部鳞状细胞癌（HNSCC）是一种异质性很强的疾病，预后较差。因此，基于预后基因特征发现新的治疗方法对于有效控制疾病至关重要。在本研究中，我们首次报告了在HNSCC患者外周血中鉴定出的一种免疫基因特征，该特征由五个基因（CLEC4C、IL23A、LCK、LY9和CD19）组成，与健康个体相比，这些基因下调了三倍以上，且与预后不良相关。通过对癌症基因组图谱（TCGA）数据库中的HNSCC肿瘤样本进行分析，我们发现这些基因作为单个基因以及作为一个五基因特征（5-GS）表达降低，均与较差的总生存期（OS）显著相关。我们的数据表明，5-GS的表达水平代表了一种预测HNSCC患者OS的免疫特征。
