The Prognostic Value of EMT in Glioma and its Role in the Glioma Immune Microenvironment

  • PDF / 2,391,621 Bytes
  • 11 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
  • 6 Downloads / 210 Views

DOWNLOAD

REPORT


The Prognostic Value of EMT in Glioma and its Role in the Glioma Immune Microenvironment Weihai Ning 1 & Zhiqiang Qiu 1 & Xiangwen Ji 2 & Xiang Wang 1 & Yihua An 1,3 & Shengdian Wang 4 & Hongwei Zhang 1 Received: 28 February 2020 / Accepted: 13 May 2020 # Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020

Abstract Diffuse glioma is the deadliest form of brain cancer, and the median survival of grade IV glioma (glioblastoma, GBM) is no more than 2 years even with maximal surgical resection followed by radiotherapy and chemotherapy, which are now the standard of care for GBM. Glioma shares common characteristics with most malignant tumours, such as invasiveness, rapid progression, resistance to various therapies and inevitable recurrence, while it also has its own unique features, such as high aggressiveness and immunotherapy resistance, which can be, respectively, attributed to epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) and the immunosuppressive microenvironment. Here, we calculated the EMT score of glioma using The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA), the Chinese Glioma Genome Atlas (CGGA) and the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) datasets and validated its prognostic value. Then, we investigated its role in the glioma immune microenvironment, identified the enriched EMT-related immune genes and determined their specific biological functions in glioma. Furthermore, clinical relevance analysis showed the translational value of these EMT-related immune genes. In short, our findings reveal a critical link between EMT and the glioma immune microenvironment and offer important clues for further investigation of the underlying molecular mechanism. Keywords EMT . Prognostic indicator . Immune microenvironment . Gene expression

Introduction Diffuse glioma, the most prevalent and life-threatening malignant brain tumour, has always been notorious for its diffuse and infiltrative nature, which yields devastating clinical outcomes (Ferlay et al. 2019). According to histological criteria, adult diffuse glioma is classified into oligodendroglioma, oligoastrocytoma, astrocytoma and glioblastoma and is graded into WHO II to IV stages, respectively (Molinaro et al. Weihai Ning and Zhiqiang Qiu contributed equally to this work. * Hongwei Zhang [email protected] 1

Department of Neurosurgery, Sanbo Brain Hospital, Capital Medical University, Beijing 100093, China

2

Department of Biomedical Informatics, Department of Physiology and Pathophysiology, Center for Noncoding RNA Medicine, School of Basic Medical Sciences, Peking University, 38 Xueyuan Rd, Beijing 100191, China

3

Department of Neurosurgery, Chinese PLA General Hospital, Beijing 100853, China

4

CAS Key Laboratory of Infection and Immunity, Institute of Biophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

2019). Among them, glioblastoma is the most common (accounting for approximately 55% of gliomas) and also the deadliest glioma (with a dismal median survival of 14– 16 months) (Wen and Kesari 2008). Despite decades of research and aggressive treatment, only ne