Immune Cell Infiltration in Bladder Cancer

Abstract

Background Bladder cancer is one of the most common malignant diseases with high recurrence rates worldwide. Although immunotherapy has been applied in bladder cancer for a long period of time, the tumor-infiltrating immune cells (TIICs) in bladder cancer has not been systematical investigated. Methods CIBERSORT, a versatile computational method for quantifying cell fractions from bulk tissue gene expression profiles (GEPs), was applied to calculate the TIICs fraction proportion in normal bladder tissues and in bladder cancer tissues with the TCGA data. Results compared to normal bladder tissue, B cells naïve, T cells CD4 memory resting and Mast cells resting fractions proportion decreased, and NK resting, macrophages M0 and macrophages M1 increased. In BLCAs tissue, pro-tumorigenic related immune cells were negatively correlated with anti-tumor immune cells. New tumor with locoregional had high fraction proportion of macrophages M0 and macrophages M1. Dendritic cells activated, Monocytes, macrophages M1, Tregs and T cells follicular helper significantly increased in low grade BLCAs. Tregs had a high proportion in BLCAs patients accepted low radiation dose. Conclusions This study indicates that macrophages M2 and Tregs could be the promising immunotherapy targets combined radiotherapy in BLCAs. The result provides valuable information to understand the immunity status in BLCAs.