Open Access

ARTICLE

Microenvironment and related genes predict outcomes of patients with cervical cancer: evidence from TCGA and bioinformatic analysis

WENXI GAO^1,2,#, QIANQIAN MA^3,#, CHENYU TANG^2,#, YUELI ZHAN⁴, YINONG DUAN², HUIHUA NI^5,*, YUNZHAO XU^5,6,*

1 Laboratory Center of Economics and Management School, Nantong University, Nantong, 226019, China
2 School of Medicine, Nantong University, Nantong, 226001, China
3 Department of Group Health Section, Wuxi Matemaland Child Health Care Hospital Affiliated of Nanjing Medical School, Wuxi, 214002, China
4 Department of Anesthesiology, Anxi County Maternal and Child Health Hospital, Quanzhou, 362400, China
5 Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Nantong University Affiliated Hospital, Nantong, 226001, China
6 Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, School of Medicine, Nantong University, Nantong, 226001, China

* Address correspondence to: Huihua Ni, ; Yunzhao Xu,
# These authors contributed equally to this work

BIOCELL 2020, 44(4), 597-605. https://doi.org/10.32604/biocell.2020.011328

Received 01 May 2020; Accepted 12 August 2020; Issue published 24 December 2020

Abstract

Cervical cancer (CESC) is one of the most common cancers and affects the female genital tract. Consistent HPV infection status has been determined to be a vital cause of tumorigenesis. HPV infection may induce changes to the immune system and limit the host’s immune response. Immunotherapy is therefore essential to improving the overall survival of both locally advanced and recurrent CESC patients. Using 304 relevant samples from TCGA, we assessed immune cell function in CESC patients to better understand the status of both tumor micro-environment cells and immune cells in CESC. Functional enrichment analysis, pathway enrichment analysis, and PPI network construction were performed to explore the differentially expressed genes (DEGs). The analysis identified 425 DEGs, which included 295 up-regulated genes and 130 down-regulated genes. We established that upregulation of CCL5 was correlated with significantly better survival, meaning that CCL5 expression could serve as a novel prognostic biomarker for CESC patients. We further focused on CCL5 as a hub gene in CESC, as it had significant correlations with increased numbers of several types of immune cells. Cell-type fractions of M1 macrophages were significantly higher in the high-immune-scores group, which was associated with better overall survival. Finally, we concluded that CCL5 is a promising prognostic biomarker for CESC, as well as a novel chemotherapeutic target.

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