CXCL12 and CD3E as Indicators for Tumor Microenvironment Modulation in Bladder Cancer and Their Correlations With Immune Infiltration and Molecular Subtypes

• Main Authors: Yi Liu, YuCai Wu, PeiPei Zhang, ChaoJie Xu, ZeSen Liu, ChaoJie He, YiMing Liu, ZhengJun Kang
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Frontiers Media S.A. 2021-03-01
• Series: Frontiers in Oncology
• Subjects: CXCL12; CD3E; bladder cancer; tumor microenvironment; tumor-infiltrating immune cells; prognosis
• Online Access: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fonc.2021.636870/full

Bladder cancer (BLCA) represents the ninth most common malignant tumor in the world and is characterized by high recurrence risk. Tumor microenvironment (TME) plays an important role in regulating the progression of BLCA. Immunotherapy, including Bacillus Calmette-Guerin (BCG) and programmed cell death protein 1 (PD-1)/programmed death ligand 1 (PD-L1), is closely associated with TME and is widely used for treating BLCA. But parts of BLCA patients have no response to these treatment ways, thus a better understanding of the complex TME of BLCA is still needed. We downloaded the gene expression profile and corresponding clinical information of 414 BLCA patients from the TCGA database. Via the ESTIMATE and CIBERSORT algorithm, we identified the two hub genes (CXCL12 and CD3E) and explored their correlations with immune infiltration. We found that BLCA patients with higher expression of CXCL12 and lower expression of CD3E had prolonged survival. Gene set enrichment analysis (GSEA) revealed that both CXCL12 and CD3E were enriched in immune-related pathways. We also discovered that stromal score and the level of CXCL12 were higher in luminal subtype, and immune score and the level of CD3E were higher in the basal subtype. Furtherly, we found that CXCL12 was associated with naive B cells, resting mast cell, M2 macrophages, follicular helper T cells, and dendritic cells. CD8+ T cells, CD4+ T cells, regulatory T cells (Tregs), and macrophages were correlated with CD3E. In conclusions, we found that CXCL12 and CD3E might serve as indicators of TME modulation in BLCA. Therapy targeting CXCL12 and CD3E had the potential as novel therapeutic strategy.