The viral expression and immune status in human cancers and insights into novel biomarkers of immunotherapy

BMC Cancer

Qin Li¹  Qiupeng Zheng¹  Yan Li¹  Yuchen Li¹  Jingjing Zhao¹  Siyuan Chen²  Bing Chen²  Xiaodong Zhu²  Hongyan Lai²  Shenglin Huang² 

[1] Department of Medical Oncology, Shanghai Key Laboratory of Medical Epigenetics, Fudan University Shanghai Cancer Center, Institutes of Biomedical Sciences, Fudan University, 270 Dong An Rd, 200032, Shanghai, China;Department of Medical Oncology, Shanghai Key Laboratory of Medical Epigenetics, Fudan University Shanghai Cancer Center, Institutes of Biomedical Sciences, Fudan University, 270 Dong An Rd, 200032, Shanghai, China;Department of Oncology, Shanghai Medical College, Fudan University, Shanghai, China;

关键词: Viral infections;    Tumor immune microenvironment (TIME);    Immunotherapy;    Machine learning;    pan-cancer analysis;   

DOI  :  10.1186/s12885-021-08871-9

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundViral infections are prevalent in human cancers and they have great diagnostic and theranostic values in clinical practice. Recently, their potential of shaping the tumor immune microenvironment (TIME) has been related to the immunotherapy of human cancers. However, the landscape of viral expressions and immune status in human cancers remains incompletely understood.MethodsWe developed a next-generation sequencing (NGS)-based pipeline to detect viral sequences from the whole transcriptome and used machine learning algorithms to classify different TIME subtypes.ResultsWe revealed a pan-cancer landscape of viral expressions in human cancers where 9 types of viruses were detected in 744 tumors of 25 cancer types. Viral infections showed different tissue tendencies and expression levels. Multi-omics analyses further revealed their distinct impacts on genomic, transcriptomic and immune responses. Epstein-Barr virus (EBV)-infected stomach adenocarcinoma (STAD) and Human Papillomavirus (HPV)-infected head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSC) showed decreased genomic variations, significantly altered gene expressions, and effectively triggered anti-viral immune responses. We identified three TIME subtypes, in which the “Immune-Stimulation” subtype might be the promising candidate for immunotherapy. EBV-infected STAD and HPV-infected HNSC showed a higher frequency of the “Immune-Stimulation” subtype. Finally, we constructed the eVIIS pipeline to simultaneously evaluate viral infection and immune status in external datasets.ConclusionsViral infections are prevalent in human cancers and have distinct influences on hosts. EBV and HPV infections combined with the TIME subtype could be promising biomarkers of immunotherapy in STAD and HNSC, respectively. The eVIIS pipeline could be a practical tool to facilitate clinical practice and relevant studies.

【 授权许可】

CC BY