The Association between Immune Infiltration and Clinical Phenotypes and Prognosis of Prostate Cancer

Some evidences show that immune infiltration is closely related to the clinical outcomes in cancers such as colorectal cancer. However, previous studies have not explained the diversity of cell types that make up the immune response. In particular, although some studies and reviews have shown that immunotherapy is important for cancer treatment, few studies have elucidated the relationship between prostate cancer (PCa) phenotype and immune infiltration.

In this study, we analyzed whether different types of tumor-infiltrating immune cells would affect the clinical phenotypes and survival of PCa based on a deconvolution algorithm and annotated gene expression profiles.

The 22 subsets of immune cells inferred by CIBERSORT and the infiltration abundance of 6 immune cells calculated by TIMER were used to determine the associations between them and the PCa traits and survival response. In addition, the survival tree models were constructed to classify PCa patients into four subtypes, and the traits and prognosis were compared among these subtypes.

As a result, we found that some PCa patients with high death risk lacking immune infiltration were related to the poor prognosis. For the cell subsets studied and subtypes analysis, a low proportion of mast resting cells and T-cells follicular helper exhibited the obvious association with poor outcome.

In summary, our study suggested the differences in the cellular composition of the immune infiltrate in PCa, and these differences might be important determinants for PCa traits and prognosis.