Cellular landscape of tumour microenvironment in prostate cancer

Abstract

Prostate cancer is still a public health priority in men and the impact of this disease will be more pronounced with the ageing of the world's population. Clinical heterogeneity of prostate cancer is reflected in spatial and clonal genomic diversity. Accumulating evidence demonstrates that the malignant behaviour of cancer is not only attributed to cancer cells but also fundamentally affected by stromal activity and controlled by various mechanisms of the tumour microenvironment. Data on prostate cancer in this study was derived from seven GEO datasets and the TCGA database. We analyzed the tumour microenvironment of prostate cancer in terms of clinical process, T stage and Gleason score using EPIC and xCell algorithms. We also analyzed the common immune checkpoints. In this study, we confirmed remarkable tumour tissue remodelling in the development of prostate cancer and further demonstrated the importance of cancer-related fibroblasts in the biochemical recurrence and metastasis for patients with prostate cancer undergoing radical radiotherapy or prostatectomy. In addition, we found that NRP1, CD200, TNFSF18 and CD80 might be the potential targets for prostate cancer.