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CXCL8 is a valid potential prognostical marker for esophageal squamous cell carcinoma
Background
Esophageal cancer is one of the most malignant cancers worldwide. Deciphering of the complexity of the tumor and tumor microenvironment by single-cell sequencing can provide deeper understanding to the development of esophageal squamous cancer at the individual cellular level.
Methods
The GDC API was used to download the TCGA database. Principal component analysis (PCA) algorithms was used for uniform manifold approximation and projection (UMAP) and t-distributed stochastic neighbor embedding (tSNE). The cells sorted were clustered by the FindClusters function with a resolution of 0.5, and the FindAllMarkers function was applied to find differentially expressed genes (DEGs). R packageclusterProfiler, SPIA package and the GSEA method were used for feature-rich analysis. Protein interoperability networks of chosen genes came from the String database, and the corresponding follow-up data from TCGA database. Statistical significance was defined by P value < 0.05. All analysis were performed by R software.
Results
There are specific cell subsets in esophageal cancer and paracancerous samples, such as paneth cell, natural killer cell, exhausted CD8+ T cell enrichment in tumor samples, and CD8+ memory T (Tem) cell, B cell enrichment in cancer samples. B cells and monocytes are different in Stage II and Stage III, and these differences may be related to RNA transcription and degradation. Then, we figured out CXCL8 and CCL2 from 177 significant genes, and found that CXCL8 had higher expressions in multiple cell groups in cancer samples. What’s more, high and low expression of CXCL8 showed significant differences in prognosis including overall survival (OS), disease free interval (DFI) and disease specific survival (DSS).
Conclusions
Our study revealed that CXCL8 is a valid potential prognostical marker and can be a promising therapeutic target for esophageal squamous cell carcinoma.
Legal entity responsible for the study
The authors.
Funding
Has not received any funding.
Disclosures
All authors have declared no conflicts of interest.
