Prognostic analysis of macrophage infiltration in patients with pancreatic cancer and preliminary screening of differential genes / 中华肝胆外科杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective:To analyze the correlations between the prognosis of patients with pancreatic cancer and macrophage infiltration, and to find the differential gene correlated with macrophage infiltration in patients with pancreatic cancer through bioinformatics.Methods:A total of 32 patients with pancreatic cancer admitted to the First Hospital of Lanzhou University from June 2015 to December 2018 were selected as the research objects, including 19 males and 13 females, with the age of (61.8±2.8) years. Cancer tissues, adjacent tissues, and related clinical data were collected. F4/80 (macrophage marker) immunohistochemical staining was performed on the samples. The survival time was followed up and its correlation with the above indexes was analyzed. The pancreatic cancer data from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database was used for bioinformatics analysis.Results:The survival time of pancreatic cancer patients was negatively correlated with degree of macrophage infiltration in cancer tissues ( r=-0.522, P=0.002), but not with adjacent tissues ( r=0.168, P=0.358). The degree of macrophage infiltration in cancer tissue combined with preoperative serum carbohydrate antigen 19-9 (CA19-9), tumor TNM stage and vascular invasion can predict survival up to 47.4% of the survival time ( R2=0.474). TCGA database bioinformatic analysis showed that in pancreatic cancer there were 95 differentially expressed genes significantly correlated with M2 macrophage infiltration, among which JPH3 (positive correlation) and IL17REL (negative correlation) were the main genes. Conclusion:The degree of macrophage infiltration in cancer tissue can be used as a prognostic factor for patients with pancreatic cancer, and the combination with preoperative serum CA19-9, tumor TNM stage and vascular invasion is more accurate in predicting the prognosis. The related mechanism of M2 macrophage infiltration can be studied around the differential genes such as JPH3 and IL17REL.