Landscape of Immune Cell Infiltration in Cervical Cancer

Abstract BackgroundCervical cancer is a life-threatening cancer among women. It is the second most prevalent malignant tumor in women. It ranks high in cancer deaths among women worldwide, including in the United States. Immune checkpoint inhibitors have emerged as an important therapeutic approach to treat several cancers, including cervical cancer. Notably, the development and progress of cervical cancer may be related to sustained immune response. This underlines the need to clarify immune cell infiltration (ICI) in cervical cancer tissues. MethodsIn this study, disease-related information of 964 cervical cancer patients was first retrieved from Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) and The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database. We utilized bioinformatics data to analyze the expression profiles of immune genes in cervical cancer tissues. ResultsPatients were divided into high and low groups according to ICI score. High ICI scores corresponded with activation of immune signaling pathways and high tumor mutation burden (TMB), which was related to better prognosis of G1-2 cervical cancer. In addition, most immune checkpoints and immuno-related genes such as CD274, CD8A, CXCL10, etc. were over-expressed in the high ICI group. ConclusionsThis study demonstrated that ICI score can accurately predict the prognosis of cervical cancer. Understanding ICI patterns will deepen our understanding of tumor microenvironment (TME) of cervical cancer, which may create the foundation for the development of efficient immunotherapeutic strategies against the cancer.