Research Paper Volume 12, Issue 21 pp 21518—21543

Oncostatin M expression and TP53 mutation status regulate tumor-infiltration of immune cells and survival outcomes in cholangiocarcinoma

Qi Liu1, *, , Tian Lan1, *, , Yuxuan Song2, , Jianpeng Cai1, , Xi Yu1, , Wei Chen1, ,

  • 1 Department of Pancreatico-Biliary Surgery, The First Affiliated Hospital, Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou 510080, Guangdong Province, China
  • 2 Department of Urology, Tianjin Medical University General Hospital, Tianjin 300052, China
* Equal contribution

Received: May 25, 2020       Accepted: August 1, 2020       Published: November 7, 2020      

https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.103936
How to Cite

Copyright © 2020 Liu et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 3.0 License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

In this study, we used bioinformatics tools to analyze transcriptome data from cholangiocarcinoma (CCA) patients in multiple datasets (Sun Yat-sen University, TCGA and GSE32225 cohorts) to identify mechanisms that regulate tumor infiltration by immune cells and survival outcomes. We identified 96 differentially expressed genes (DEGs), including 13 upregulated and 83 downregulated genes, in CCA tissues as regulatory T cells were significantly higher and the proportions of activated natural killer cells and monocytes were significantly lower in CCA tissues than the precancerous tissues. The survival outcomes of CCA patients were associated with the TP53 gene mutation status, levels of Oncostatin M (OSM) expression, and the proportions of tumor-infiltrating immune cell types, including dendritic cells, monocytes, and T follicular helper cells. Functional enrichment analysis of the DEGs in the high OSM-expressing CCA tissues showed that pathways related to tumor progression and immune response were significantly upregulated. Our study demonstrates that OSM expression and TP53 mutation status regulate the tumor infiltration by immune cells and survival outcomes in CCA. OSM is thus a potential prognostic biomarker and therapeutic target in cholangiocarcinoma.

Abbreviations

CCA: Cholangiocarcinoma; TIME: Tumor immune microenvironment; DEGs: differentially expressed genes; TCGA: The Cancer Genome Atlas; OSM: Oncostatin M; IHC: immunohistochemistry; KM: Kaplan-Meier; Tregs: T regulatory cells; OS: overall survival; DFS: disease-free survival; NK: natural killer; BP: Biological process; CC: Cellular component; MF: Molecular function; PPI: Protein-Protein Interaction; GEO: Gene Expression Omnibus; ICGC: International Cancer Genome Consortium; GSEA: Gene Set Enrichment Analysis; GO: Gene Ontology; KEGG: Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes; ICB: Immune checkpoint blockade; TAMs: Tumor-associated macrophages; MDSCs: Myeloid-derived suppressor cells; LCSCs: Liver cancer stem cells.