Identification of Prognostic Related Genes of Tumor Microenvironment Derived From Esophageal Cancer Patients

Background & Objective: Esophageal cancer (ESCA) is a high incident cancer worldwide with poor survival and limited therapeutic options. Due to the lack of biomarkers that can facilitate early detection, its treatment remains a great challenge. The purpose of the current study aimed to establish Stromal-Immune scores related genes to accelerate clinical diagnosis and treatment for ESCA patients. Methods: We integrated the expression profiles and tumor mutational burden (TMB) of ESCA in TCGA database. Then we estimated the Stromal-Immune score of each sample by the estimate R package. Finally, GEO database was used to further validate the expression profile of key genes. Results: First, we testified that there was significant statistical difference between TMB and ESTIMATE score for ESCA patients. According to the Stromal-Immune score differential we revealed 859 intersection genes influencing both the immune and stromal scores. In addition, GO assay demonstrated that 859 intersection genes were tightly involved in adaptive immune response, regulation of lymphocyte activation, and KEGG assay revealed the Cytokine-cytokine receptor interaction and Chemokine signaling pathway in tumor microenvironment. Furthermore, there were 175 nodes in the PPI network, 35 genes selected as hub genes such as ITGAM, CXCL10, CCR2, CCR5 and CCR1, 23 of the 859 intersection genes predicted the overall survival rate. C1QA and FCER1G as hub genes were correlated with overall survival of the patients in TCGA database, which all exhibited the same tendency with GEO database. Conclusion: We identified a set of Stromal-Immune score related prognostic differential expression genes (DEGs), which could influence the complexity of tumor microenvironment. C1QA and FCER1G were identified and validated in association with the progression of ESCA. Keywords esophageal Cancer; the tumor microenvironment; ESTIMATE score; Stromal-Immune score; C1QA; FCER1G