Integrated Analysis of Single-Cell RNA-Seq and Bulk RNA-Seq Unravels the Molecular Feature of Tumor-Associated Macrophage of Acute Myeloid Leukemia

Abstract

Background: The association between acute myeloid leukemia (AML) and macrophage remains to be deeply explored.

Methods: Gene expression profiles and clinical variable characteristics of AML patients were collected from TCGA, GEO, and TARGET databases. Consensus clustering was employed to construct the macrophage-related clusters. The macrophage-related index (MRI) was constructed using the LASSO and multivariate Cox analysis. The GSE71014 and TARGET datasets were utilized as external validation sets. Single-cell sequencing data for AML (GSE116256) was adopted to analyze modeled gene expression levels in cells.

Results: Two macrophage-related clusters with different prognostic and immune infiltration characteristics were constructed in AML. Cluster B had a poorer prognosis, more cancer-promoting pathway enrichment, and an immunosuppressive microenvironment. Relied on the MRI, patients of different groups showed different levels of immune infiltration, different mutations, and prognoses. LGALS1 and BCL2A1 may play roles in promoting cancer in AML, while ELANE may have a significant effect on suppressing cancer.

Conclusion: Macrophage-related genes (MRGs) had significant impacts on the occurrence and progression of AML. MRI may better evaluate the prognosis and immune features of AML patients.