BIRC5 expression correlates with immunosuppressive phenotype and predicts inferior response to immunotherapy in lung adenocarcinoma.

BACKGROUND

BIRC5, also known as survivin, is the smallest but functionally most complex member of the inhibitor of apoptosis protein (IAP) family and plays an important role in tumorigenesis, recurrence, and chemoresistance, this study aimed to investigate its impact on the clinical and tumor microenvironmental features of lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD), together with its prognostic values.

METHODS

Clinical and transcriptomic data of 535 LUAD samples, 59 normal lung, and 54 patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) received immune checkpoint blockades (ICBs) were analyzed. Immune infiltration analysis was conducted to uncover the relationship between tumor microenvironmental features and BIRC5 expression level. The prognostic values of BIRC5 were also evaluated with log-rank test and Cox regression analysis.

RESULTS

LUAD had a significantly higher BIRC5 expression level than normal lung tissues. The elevated BIRC5 expression was markedly associated with unfavorable clinical outcomes. Transcriptomic and single-cell sequencing data analysis revealed that tumors with high BIRC5 expression was correlated with multiple pathways' enrichment. Immune infiltration analysis indicated a negative correlation between BIRC5 expression and infiltration levels of CD8+ T cells, dendritic cells (DCs), and natural killer (NK) cell in LUAD, but a positive correlation was observed between BIRC5 expression and regulatory T cells (Tregs) infiltrations. Importantly, NSCLC patients received ICB with high BIRC5 expression had dramatically shorter progression-free survival (PFS; 1.2 4.5 months; P=0.01) and overall survival (OS; 3.1 12.7 months; P=0.005) than those with low BIRC5 expression.

CONCLUSIONS

These findings suggested that high BIRC5 expression was associated with DNA damage/repair, cell invasion and proliferation related pathways enrichment and increased Tregs infiltration, which would result in inferior outcomes in NSCLC received ICB.