Identification of tumor-infiltrating immune cells and prognostic validation of tumor-infiltrating mast cells in adrenocortical carcinoma: results from bioinformatics and real-world data

Objective The purpose of this study was to explore the composition of tumor-infiltrating immune cells (TIIC) and prognostic significance of tumor-infiltrating mast cells (TIMC) in adrenocortical carcinoma (ACC). Methods The gene expression profiles of ACC were downloaded from the Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and Gene Expression Omnibus (GSE90713, GSE12368). The abundance of TIICs in ACC samples was calculated by CIBERSORT algorithm and immunohistochemistry was used to identify mast cells of 39 tumor samples from Fudan University Shanghai Cancer Center (FUSCC). Differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were analyzed by LIMMA package using R software. Survival analysis was analyzed by Kaplan-Meier method and Cox regression models. Results The abundance of mast cells (p = .008) was positively correlated with ACC patients’ outcome in TCGA cohort and was also positively correlated with both overall survival (p