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Immune infiltration could predict the efficacy of short-term radiotherapy in patients with cervical cancer

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Abstract

Radiotherapy is the main treatment for cervical cancer. It is usually applied alone or in combination with surgery and/or chemotherapy. To explore the association between immune microenvironment of cervical cancer and radiotherapy response, we collected 20 paired cervical cancer tumor samples before and after radiotherapy and partial clinical information. With paired-end RNA-seq, we quantified the immune infiltration and tumor purity of these samples, and obtained 6350 differentially expressed genes before and after radiotherapy. With the help of R language, the function enrichment analysis and 22 immune cells infiltration analysis were carried out. Moreover, we built a random forest model based on the immune microenvironment to predict the short-term efficacy of radiotherapy. We found that the effect of radiotherapy on the immune microenvironment of stage III and IV cervical cancer patients was weaker than that of stage I and II cervical cancer patients. Radiotherapy can significantly reduce the tumor purity and increase immune infiltration. The proportions of the immune infiltrating cells are predictive of the radiotherapy efficacy. In addition, the local mucositis caused by radiotherapy can improve the curative effect of radiotherapy.

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Funding

This work was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (82073339; 62072058), Project of Wuxi Health Committee (Q202015) and Scientific Projects of Changzhou Medical Center raised by Nanjing Medical University (CMCB202201).

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Author notes

  1. Zhiqiang Sun, Xue Liu, Jing Song have contributed equally to this work and share first authorship.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Radiation Medicine and Protection, Medical College of Soochow University, Suzhou, 215123, China

    Zhiqiang Sun & Shuyu Zhang

  2. Collaborative Innovation Center of Radiological Medicine of Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions, Suzhou, China

    Zhiqiang Sun & Shuyu Zhang

  3. Department of Radiotherapy, The Affiliated Changzhou Second People’s Hospital of Nanjing Medical University, Changzhou Medical Center, Nanjing Medical University, Changzhou, China

    Xue Liu & Judong Luo

  4. Department of Radiotherapy, Dalian Medical University, Dalian, China

    Xue Liu

  5. Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Affiliated Hospital of Jiangnan University, Wuxi, China

    Jing Song

  6. School of Computer Science and Technology, Nanjing Tech University, Nanjing, China

    Hui Liu

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  1. Zhiqiang Sun
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Contributions

ZS, XL, HL, JL conceived and designed the experiment, and analyzed the data. JS, SZ collected clinical cervical cancer samples. ZS, XL wrote this paper. All the authors reviewed the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Judong Luo.

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Standardize treatment according to NCCN guidelines. All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

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Sun, Z., Liu, X., Song, J. et al. Immune infiltration could predict the efficacy of short-term radiotherapy in patients with cervical cancer. Clin Transl Oncol 25, 1353–1367 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12094-022-03033-0

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