Research Paper Volume 12, Issue 5 pp 4603—4616
The prognostic value of tumor mutational burden and immune cell infiltration in esophageal cancer patients with or without radiotherapy
- 1 Department of Radiation and Medical Oncology, Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University, Wuhan 430071, Hubei, China
- 2 Department of Biological Repositories, Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University, Wuhan 430071, Hubei, China
- 3 Hubei Key Laboratory of Tumour Biological Behaviors, Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University, Wuhan 430071, Hubei, China
- 4 Hubei Cancer Clinical Study Center, Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University, Wuhan 430071, Hubei, China
- 5 Human Genetics Resource Preservation Center of Hubei Province, Human Genetics Resource Preservation Center of Wuhan University, Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University, Wuhan 430071, Hubei, China
Received: October 29, 2019 Accepted: March 2, 2020 Published: March 12, 2020
https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.102917How to Cite
Copyright © 2020 Yuan et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
Growing evidence highlighted the tumor mutational burden (TMB) as an important feature of carcinogenesis and therapeutic efficacy in esophageal cancer (EC). Our study aimed to explore the genomic landscape and the correlation between TMB and immune cell infiltration in EC patients with or without radiotherapy. The EC patients were categorized into high TMB (TMB-H) and low TMB (TMB-L) groups by the ESTIMATE algorithm, and subgroup analysis was performed based on receiving radiotherapy or not. Univariate regression analysis indicated TMB and TNM stages as high-risk prognostic factors (Hazard ratio > 1 and P < 0.05). Multivariate regression analysis suggested TMB as an independent prognostic factor (Hazard ratio = 1.051, P = 0.003). Kaplan-Meier analysis showed no significant difference of the overall survival (OS) between TMB-H and TMB-L groups (P = 0.082). However, EC patients without radiotherapy in the TMB-H group had significantly decreased OS (P = 0.038) and increased Tregs cell infiltration (P = 0.033). These results suggested TMB as a prognostic marker for EC patients. Especially for patients who did not receive radiotherapy, the prognosis of TMB-H patients was significantly poorer than that of TMB-L patients, which might result from the different regulatory T cell infiltration.