Open Access

ARTICLE

M2 macrophages predicted the prognosis of breast cancer by combing a novel immune cell signature and promoted cell migration and invasion of cancer cells in vitro

QI XIA¹, XING CHEN², QINGHUA MA³, XIANXIU WEN^2,*

1 Department of PICC and Day Chemotherapy Center, Sichuan Provincial People’s Hospital, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, China
2 Department of Nursing, Sichuan Provincial People’s Hospital, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, 610072, China
3 Sichuan Translational Medicine Research Hospital, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Chengdu, 610072, China

* Corresponding Author: XIANXIU WEN. Email:

(This article belongs to the Special Issue: Bioinformatics Study of Diseases)

BIOCELL 2024, 48(2), 217-228. https://doi.org/10.32604/biocell.2023.027414

Received 28 October 2022; Accepted 06 February 2023; Issue published 23 February 2024

Abstract

Background: Breast cancer (BC) is the most common cancer and the leading cause of cancer death in women. Immune features play an important role in improving the prognosis prediction of BC. However, while previous immune signatures consisted mainly of immune genes, immune cell-based signatures have been rarely reported. Methods: In this study, we report that a novel immune cell signature is effective in improving prognostic prediction by combining M2 macrophages. We identified 17 differentially infiltrating immune cells between cancer and normal groups. Prognostic features of the four immune cells identified by LASSO COX analysis showed good performance for survival risk stratification in both the training and validation datasets. Independent prognostic analysis showed that M2 macrophages were significantly associated with survival in BC patients and both the cells and the risk score were the main prognostic factors independent of survival in BC patients. Results: Therefore, we combined M2 macrophages and risk scores to create a nomogram with good prognostic predictive power. Finally, we attempted to study the effect of M2 on M2 macrophage progression in BC in vitro. BC cells cultured with M2 macrophage-conditioned medium exhibited distinct malignant features, including migration and invasion. Conclusion: The findings suggest that M2 macrophages are associated with poor prognosis in breast cancer patients possibly by promoting tumor invasion and migration. This work may provide a new strategy for prognostic prediction and immunotherapy in BC.

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Keywords

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