DPP6 and MFAP5 are associated with immune infiltration as diagnostic biomarkers in distinguishing uterine leiomyosarcoma from leiomyoma

OBJECTIVE: Uterine leiomyosarcoma (ULMS) is the most common subtype of uterine sarcoma and is difficult to discern from uterine leiomyoma (ULM) preoperatively. The aim of the study was to determine the potential and significance of immune-related diagnostic biomarkers in distinguishing ULMS from ULM. METHODS: Two public gene expression profiles (GSE36610 and GSE64763) from the GEO datasets containing ULMS and ULM samples were downloaded. Differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were selected and determined among 37 ULMS and 25 ULM control samples. The DEGs were used for Gene Ontology (GO), Kyoto Encyclopaedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) and Disease Ontology (DO) enrichment analyses as well as gene set enrichment analysis (GSEA). The candidate biomarkers were identified by least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) and support vector machine recursive feature elimination (SVM-RFE) analyses. The receiver operating characteristic curve (ROC) was applied to evaluate diagnostic ability. For further confirmation, the biomarker expression levels and diagnostic value in ULMS were verified in the GSE9511 and GSE68295 datasets (12 ULMS and 10 ULM), and validated by immunohistochemistry (IHC). The CIBERSORT algorithm was used to calculate the compositional patterns of 22 types of immune cells in ULMS. RESULT: In total, 55 DEGs were recognized via GO analysis, and KEGG analyses revealed that the DEGs were enriched in nuclear division, and cell cycle. The recognized DEGs were primarily implicated in non−small cell lung carcinoma and breast carcinoma. Gene sets related to the cell cycle and DNA replication were activated in ULMS. DPP6 and MFAP5 were distinguished as diagnostic biomarkers of ULMS (AUC = 0.957, AUC = 0.899, respectively), and they were verified in the GSE9511 and GSE68295 datasets (AUC = 0.983, AUC = 0.942, respectively). The low expression of DPP6 and MFAP5 were associated with ULMS. In addition, the analysis of the immune microenvironment indicated that resting mast cells were positively correlated with DPP6 and MFAP5 expression and that eosinophils and M0 macrophages were negatively correlated with DPP6 expression (P<0.05). CONCLUSION: These findings indicated that DPP6 and MFAP5 are diagnostic biomarkers of ULMS, thereby offering a novel perspective for future studies on the occurrence, function and molecular mechanisms of ULMS.