Wujun Zheng
Department of Thoracic Surgery, The First People’s Hospital of Fuyang District, Hangzhou, China.
Summary
Purpose: Although the incidence and progression of cancer has remained closely dependent on hypoxia, a critical element in the tumor microenvironment, there is still confusion about the hypoxia’s involvement in esophageal squamous cell carcinoma. We tried to investigate the correlation between esophageal squamous cell carcinoma and hypoxia, to establish the hypoxia-related gene signature in this disease.
Methods: We retrieved esophageal squamous cell carcinoma cases from Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) databases. Through conducting univariate and multivariate Cox regression analysis, the genes have been chosen to be contained in the hypoxia-associated signature. After that, we performed a survival analysis and designed to shape ROC curves, so as to confirm the gene signature. And then, the underlying relationship between the gene signature and immune cells has been investigated via the CIBERSORT tool, thus finally figuring out the immune-associated genes regulated by hypoxia.
Results: There were four genes in the final signature, including HSPA5, ENO3, GYS1, and PGM2. The results also indicated that patients in the high-risk group displayed worse survival than those in the low-risk group. Additionally, we discovered that there remained great disparity in the infiltration of immune cells between the two groups, that is, activated NK cells, CD8+ T cells, resting NK cells, and neutrophils.
Conclusions: The hypoxia-related gene signature established and validated in the research was deemed as a latent prognostic factor in esophageal squamous cell carcinoma and may guide the immunotherapy practice.
Key words: esophageal squamous cell carcinoma, hypoxia, prognostic factor, immune, GEO.
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