Tumor-Infiltrating CD4+ Central Memory T Cells Correlated with Favorable Prognosis in Oral Squamous Cell Carcinoma
Jin Wu, Tianyi Zhang, Haofeng Xiong, Liujun Zeng, Zijia Wang, Ying Peng, Weijun Chen, Xin Hu, Tong Su
Abstract
OBJECTIVE: Oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) is the most frequent oral malignancy with a poor prognosis, in which tumor-infiltrating immune cells may play a critical role. Therefore, our study aims to screen potential immune cells and immune-related genes for predicting OSCC prognosis. METHODS: A total of 310 OSCC patients with full transcriptional data and clinical characteristics were extracted from the TCGA database. Then, we obtained their abundance of tumor-infiltrating immune cells on TIMER 2.0 and analyzed them using xCell method. Univariate and multivariate Cox regressions were applied successively to identify the immune cells associated with overall survival of OSCC patients. Furthermore, we screened the prognostic genes that related to the identified immune cells and validated their expressions by immunohistochemistry. RESULTS: = 0.0075). CONCLUSION: cells, thus improving OSCC prognosis. Our findings may provide a new insight into better prognosis prediction and precise medicine for OSCC.