Author：Yuqiao Chen, Xinying Shi, Xue Song, Lingling Gao, Beibei Mao, Henghui Zhang, Yuan Zhou, Wei Zhuang

Background: The resection of early stage NSCLC offers patients the best hope of a cure. However, the recurrence rate post-resection remains high. As the mechanisms involved in the process is still not clear due to the unavailability of accurate targets, our study was aimed to integrate the impact of different immune context present in lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD) microenvironment on patients’ prognosis. 

Methods: RNA targeted sequencing was performed on 24 primary tumor specimens from the resected local advanced LUADs . Transcripts of 395 immune related genes expressed in FFPE tumor samples were analyzed. The limma package was used to analyze the different expressed genes (DEGs) between patients with different prognosis. The gene set variance analysis (GSVA) analysis was performed to explore gene sets enrichment related to the prognosis (PFS, progression free survival) post-resection. 

Results: 23 DEGs were detected in primary tumor between the better (PFS > 18months, n = 12 ) and worse (PFS≤18months, n = 12 ) prognosis group. The combined prediction model containing MPO, IL-6, CXCR2, FCGR3B, ADGRE5 could identify the favorable prognosis of patients. GSVA and Log Rank test of survival data demonstrated that the antigen processing and lymphocyte activation pathway enrichment may associate with better prognosis (p = 0.01), whereas higher Neutrophils cell infiltration in primary tumor demonstrated a shorter PFS (p = 0.008). 

Conclusions: In LUAD, the immune related genes such as MPO, IL-6, CXCR2, FCGR3B, ADGRE5, can effectively profile the landscape of tumor immune microenvironment and predict the survival in early stage of lung adenocarcinoma. Accordingly immune pathways were correlated with prognosis of these patients. Our findings suggest that immune-related RNA expression pattern in locally advanced LUAD may provide a potential predictive marker for early recurrence after surgical resection.