Comprehensive Analysis of Prognostic Microenvironment-Related Genes in Invasive Breast Cancer

• Published in: Frontiers in oncology Vol. 11; p. 576911
• Main Authors: Shi, Yingrong, Chen, Si, Xing, Huijuan, Jiang, Guanglie, Wu, Nan, Liu, Qiannan, Sakamoto, Norihiro, Kuno, Takayoshi, Sugiura, Reiko, Xiao, Qinghuan, Jin, Feng, Fang, Yue, Yao, Fan
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Switzerland Frontiers Media S.A 03-01-2022
• Subjects: immune/stromal/ESTIMATE score; invasive breast cancer; Oncology; prognosis; SASH3; TCGA database; tumor microenvironment; SASH3; invasive breast cancer; tumor microenvironment; TCGA database; immune/stromal/ESTIMATE score; prognosis
• ISSN: 2234-943X; 2234-943X
• DOI: 10.3389/fonc.2021.576911

Recent studies reveal that tumor microenvironment contributes to breast cancer (BRCA) development, progression, and therapeutic response. However, the contribution of the tumor microenvironment-related genes in routine diagnostic testing or therapeutic decision making for BRCA remains elusive. Immune/stromal/ESTIMATE scores calculated by the ESTIMATE algorithm quantify immune and stromal components in a tumor, and thus can reflect tumor microenvironment. To investigate the association of the tumor microenvironment-related genes with invasive BRCA prognosis, here we analyzed the immune/stromal/ESTIMATE scores in combination with The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database in invasive BRCA. We found that immune/stromal/ESTIMATE scores were significantly correlated with the invasive BRCA clinicopathological factors. Based on the immune/stromal/ESTIMATE scores, we extracted a series of differential expression genes (DEGs) related to the tumor microenvironment. Survival analysis was further performed to identify a list of high-frequency DEGs (HF-DEGs), which exhibited prognostic value in invasive BRCA. Importantly, consistent with the results of bioinformatics analysis, immunohistochemistry results showed that high SASH3 expression was associated with a good prognosis in invasive BRCA patients. Our findings suggest that the tumor microenvironment-related HF-DEGs identified in this study have prognostic values and may serve as potential biomarkers and therapeutic targets for invasive BRCA.