Tumor microenvironment characterization in triple-negative breast cancer identifies prognostic gene signature

We aimed to elucidate the landscape of tumor microenvironment (TME) in triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC). Cohorts from Gene Expression Omnibus database (N = 107) and METABRIC (N = 299) were used as the training set and validation set, respectively. TME was evaluated via single-sample gene set enrichment analysis, and unsupervised clustering was used for cluster identification. Consequently, TNBC was classified into two distinct TME clusters (Cluster 1 and Cluster 2) according to predefined immune-related terms. Cluster 1 was characterized by low immune infiltration with poor prognosis; whereas, Cluster 2 was characterized by high immune infiltration with better survival probability. Further, Cluster 1 had larger tumor volumes, while Cluster 2 had smaller tumor volumes. Finally, a TME signature for prognosis stratification in TNBC was developed and validated. In summary, we comprehensively evaluated the TME of TNBC and constructed a TME signature that correlated with prognosis. Our results provide new insights for the immunotherapy of TNBC.