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Fig. 1 | Molecular Cancer

Fig. 1

From: Unraveling tumour microenvironment heterogeneity in nasopharyngeal carcinoma identifies biologically distinct immune subtypes predicting prognosis and immunotherapy responses

Fig. 1

Identification of three distinct tumour microenvironment-based immune subtypes. a An immune-enriched subtype (43/113, 38%; green bar) and a non-Immune Subtype (non-IS) (70/113, 62%; grey bar) were identified using an NMF algorithm in the training cohort. The immune-enriched subtype was further subdivided into Evaded (18/113, 16%; purple bar) and Active (25/113, 22%; orange bar) Immune Subtypes (E-IS and A-IS, respectively), using nearest template prediction (NTP) analysis with a signature identifying the activated stroma response. In the heatmap, high and low ssGSEA scores are represented in red and blue, respectively. The presence of an activated stroma signature is indicated in red and its absence is in grey. b-d Box plots showing expression of exclusion-related (b), dysfunctional-related (c), and ICI response-related (d) signatures between E-IS, A-IS, and non-IS. The box plot centre corresponds to the median, with the box and whiskers corresponding to the interquartile range and 1.5 × interquartile range, respectively. P-values were based on the Kruskal–Wallis rank-sum test. CAF, cancer-associated fibroblast; ECM, extracellular matrix; GEP, gene expression profile; ICI, immune checkpoint inhibitor; MDSC, myeloid-derived suppressor cell; NMF, non-negative matrix factorization; NPC, nasopharyngeal carcinoma; ssGSEA, single-sample gene set enrichment analysis; TAM, tumour-associated macrophage

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