Immune Cell Confrontation in the Papillary Thyroid Carcinoma Microenvironment

Abstract

Background: Papillary thyroid cancer has been associated with chronic inflammation. A systematic understanding of immune cell infiltration in PTC is essential for subsequent immune research and new diagnostic and therapeutic strategies.Methods: Three different algorithms, single-sample gene set enrichment analysis (ssGSEA), immune cell marker and CIBERSORT, were used to evaluate immune cell infiltration levels (abundance and proportion) in 10 data sets (The Cancer Genome Atlas [TCGA], GSE3467, GSE3678, GSE5364, GSE27155, GSE33630, GSE50901, GSE53157, GSE58545, and GSE60542; a total of 799 PTC and 194 normal thyroid samples). Consensus unsupervised clustering divided PTC patients into low-immunity and high-immunity groups. Weighted gene coexpression network analysis (WGCNA) and gene set enrichment analysis (GSEA) were used to analyze the potential mechanisms causing differences in the immune response.Results: Compared with normal tissues, PTC tissues had a higher overall immune level and higher abundance levels and proportions of M2 macrophages, Tregs, monocytes, neutrophils, dendritic cells (DCs), mast cells (MCs), and M0 macrophages. Compared with early PTC, advanced PTC showed higher immune infiltration and higher abundance levels and proportions of M2 macrophages, Tregs, monocytes, neutrophils, DCs, MCs, and M0 macrophages. Compared to the low-immunity group, the high-immunity group exhibited more advanced stages, larger tumor sizes, greater lymph node metastases, higher tall-cell PTCs, lower follicular PTC proportions, more BRAF mutations, and fewer RAS mutations. Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) infection was the most significantly enriched Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathway for key module genes. Conclusions:In human PTC, M2 macrophages, Tregs, monocytes, neutrophils, DCs, MCs, and M0 macrophages appear to play a tumor-promoting role, while M1 macrophages, CD8+ T cells, B cells, NK cells, and T follicular helper (T FH ) cells (including eosinophils, gd T cells, and Th17 cells with weak supporting evidence) appear to play an antitumor role. During the occurrence and development of PTC, the overall immune level was increased, and the abundance and proportion of tumorpromoting immune cells were significantly increased, indicating that immune escape

The molecular feature of macrophages in tumor immune microenvironment of glioma patients

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Identification of Hub lncRNAs Along With lncRNA-miRNA-mRNA Network for Effective Diagnosis and Prognosis of Papillary Thyroid Cancer

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The mechanisms of celastrol in treating papillary thyroid carcinoma based on network pharmacology and experiment verification

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