Immunological landscape of Neuroblastoma and its clinical significance

Abstract

Immune infiltration in neuroblastoma (NBL) has been associated with clinical outcome. However, the diversity of distinct immune subpopulations that comprise immune infiltrates in NBL has not been examined. To this end, the present study investigated the immunological landscape of NBL tumors and its clinical significance. CIBERSORTx, an established RNA deconvolution algorithm, was used to impute immune cell proportions from 153 primary NBL tumors. Associations between immune proportions and overall/event-free survival were analyzed by Kaplan-Meier curves and evaluated using log-rank test. Of the 22 subpopulations imputed, M2 macrophages were the most abundant subtype in NBL tumors. Furthermore, monocytes, CD4+ naïve T cells, and CD4+ activated memory T cells were significantly associated with survival. Altogether, the findings suggest differences amongst certain immune cell subsets comprising NBL tumor infiltration and these differences may be important determinants of prognosis.

Keywords: Immunological landscape; Neuroblastoma; Rna deconvolution; Tumor-infiltrating immune cells.