Infiltrating Immune Cells in Gastric Cancer: A Novel Predicting Model for Prognosis

Objective: Immune cells infiltrating has been proved to be associated with prognosis in gastric cancer (GC) by studies. This study aims to explore the prognosis value of infiltrating immune cells in gastric cancer. Methods: In our study, the CIBERSORT algorithm was used to calculate the fraction of 22 tumor-infiltrating immune cells (TIIC) in 100 normal and 300 tumor samples from the GEO cohort and 30 normal and 344 tumor samples from the TCGA cohort. Univariate and multivariate Cox regression were used to construct an immune risk score model. Multivariate cox regression was also used to validate whether our risk score model could predict prognosis in GC independently. Furthermore, the model was validated in different patient subgroups to test its independence. P<0.05 was considered statistically significant. Results: The results showed that the fraction of 3 immune cells increased in tumor tissues compared with normal tissues in both the GEO and TCGA cohort. Univariate cox regression analysis showed four cells significantly correlated with survival rate in GC (P<0.05). The immune risk score model was constructed based on the four cells through multivariate cox regression and further validated. The KM survival curve suggested that patients with high risk had poor prognosis than patients with low risk (P<0.05). ROC curve indicated the model was reliable (AUC= 0.67 in the GEO cohort, AUC = 0.65 in the TCGA cohort). Furthermore, multivariate Cox regression showed the model was an independent factor for overall survival predicting in GC (hazard ratio (HR) = 2.35, 95% confidence interval (CI) = 1.63~3.40 in the GEO cohort, HR = 2.87, 95% CI = 1.94~4.25 in the TCGA cohort). Finally, we validated the model in patient subgroups by the KM survival curve. Conclusion: In summary, tumor-infiltrating immune cells play an essential role in GC progression and affect the outcome of GC patients. The immune risk score can predict overall survival for GC independently, and high immune risk score is associated with poor prognosis.