Gene expression-based immune infiltration analyses of renal cancer and their associations with survival outcome

Abstract

Renal cancer is a common malignant tumor with an increasing incidence rate. In this study, based on the gene expression profiles, we analyzed the compositions of tumor infiltrating immune cells (TIICs) in renal cancer and paracancerous samples by using CIBERSORT. The proportions of 22 TIICs subsets in 122 paired renal cancer and paracancerous samples, and 224 Wilms tumor (WT) samples varied between intragroup and intergroup. After analyzed the difference in TIICs composition between renal cancer and paired paracancerous samples, we found that compared with paracancerous samples, M0 macrophages and CD8 T cells were significantly elevated, while naive B cells were significantly decreased in renal cancer samples. Survival analysis showed that high overall TIICs proportion, low proportion of resting mast cells and high proportion of activated memory CD4 T cells were associated with poor prognosis of renal cancer patients. In addition, 3 clusters were identified by hierarchical clustering analysis and they presented distinct prognosis. Cluster 1 had superior survival outcome, while cluster 2 had inferior survival outcome. In summary, our study indicated that overall TIICs proportion, certain TIICs subset proportion, and distinct cluster patterns were associated with the prognosis of renal cancer, which was significant for the clinical surveillance and treatment of renal cancer.