High expression of TLR2 influenced immune infiltration in pancreatic cancer

Abstract

Abstract Purpose Pancreatic cancer showed specific immunological microenvironment. For a better understanding of relative valuable biomarkers, correlation between prognostic differentially expressed immunity genes and immunological microenvironment in online pancreatic cancer datasets was evaluated. Methods ssGSEA algorithm was used to evaluate the immunological characteristics in tumor samples. Limma algorithm was used to assess the differentially expressed genes, survival analysis was performed by Cox models and Kaplan Meiers method, gene sets enrichment analyses were conducted to evaluate the correlation between prognostic differentially expressed genes expression and GO/KEGG terms. ESTIMATE and CIBERSORT algorithms were used to evaluate the immune infiltration in tumor immunological microenvironment. Receiver operating characteristic analysis was performed to evaluate the diagnostic and prognostic value of prognostic differentially expressed genes in pancreatic cancer patients. Results High immune infiltration was demonstrated to be related with poor prognosis in pancreatic cancer. Four genes including TLR2 were identified as prognostic differentially expressed immunity genes in pancreatic cancer, high TLR2 expression was correlated with high infiltration and poor prognosis, furthermore, TLR2 expression was correlated with opposite survival in early/advanced stages. High TLR2 expression was correlated with immune-related pathways, functions and processes and indicated high immune infiltration of immune cells including activated memory CD4+ T cells, M2 macrophages and rested dendritic cells and low immune infiltration of regulatory T cells, activated natural killer cells and plasma cells. Moreover, TLR2 showed a moderate predictive accuracy in the diagnosis of pancreatic cancer. Conclusion Correlation between TLR2 and immune infiltration in pancreatic cancer was identified.