CXCL9 mRNA expression in ovarian tumor tissue and its relations with prognosis and characteristics of immune microenvironment / 上海交通大学学报（医学版）

ABSTRACT

Objective: To investigate the effects of CXCL9 (C-X-C motif chemokine ligand 9) mRNA expression on the overall survival of ovarian cancer patients, and to explore its relations with immune-related pathways and gene expression in tumor microenvironment, so as to re-veal the significance of CXCL9 in the prognosis of ovarian cancer. Methods ¡¤ Kaplan-Meier method was used to analyze the relationship be-tween CXCL9 mRNA expression and the survival of ovarian cancer patients in The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database. Gene Set Enrich-ment Analysis (GSEA) was used to assess the biological function of CXCL9 mRNA in ovarian cancer. The correlation of CXCL9 mRNA with cluster of differentiation 8A (CD8A) and immune checkpoint mRNA expression was analyzed. Results ¡¤ The high expression of CXCL9 mRNA was significantly associated with better prognosis in patients with ovarian cancer. GSEA showed that CXCL9 mRNA was enriched in the immune response-related pathway. In addition, Pearson correlation analysis showed that CXCL9 mRNA expression was positively correlated with the mRNA expression of CD8A and immune checkpoint. Conclusion ¡¤ The high expression of CXCL9 mRNA in ovarian tumor tissue is a good predictor of prognosis, and the mRNA expression of CXCL9 may be closely related to the recruitment of lymphocytes from tumor margin to the tumor microenvironment to exert the function of anti-tumor immune response.