Open AccessCharacteristics of lymphocyte-infiltrating papillary thyroid cancer
Author(s) -
ChiYu Kuo,
Tsang-Pai Liu,
PoSheng Yang,
ShihPing Cheng
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
journal of cancer research and practice
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2589-0425
pISSN - 2311-3006
DOI - 10.1016/j.jcrpr.2017.03.003
Subject(s) - medicine , thyroid cancer , tumor infiltrating lymphocytes , papillary thyroid cancer , lymphocyte , immune system , pathology , transcriptome , gene expression profiling , downregulation and upregulation , thyroid , cytokine , cancer research , oncology , immunology , gene expression , gene , immunotherapy , biology , biochemistry
Background: The tumor-promoting or tumor-suppressing role of tumor-associated lymphocytes remains a subject of debate. We examined thyroid cancer data from The Cancer Genome Atlas in an attempt to define the relationship between lymphocyte infiltrates and clinical and molecular presentations.Methods: Patient characteristics and transcriptome profiling were compared between groups dichotomized by the percentage of tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes of the primary tumor. Differentially expressed genes were subjected to functional enrichment analyses.Results: In 52% of the tumors, there was no lymphocyte infiltration. Papillary thyroid cancer with infiltrating lymphocytes was associated with classical histologic features, multifocality, and lymph node metastasis. Patients with lymphocyte-infiltrating cancer had a longer overall survival duration (log-rank P = 0.018). A total of 3151 differentially expressed genes were identified. Pathways related to immune response were upregulated, where the expression of several thyroid-related genes was downregulated.Conclusion: Papillary thyroid cancer with tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes is associated with an upregulation of immune response and cytokine production, along with a trend which suggests an overall survival benefit