Co-deficiency of B7-H3 and B7-H4 identifies high CD8 + T cell infiltration and better prognosis in pancreatic cancer

Background Immunotherapy is a novel hotspot for the treatment of pancreatic adenocarcinoma (PAAD). However, potential biomarkers which could identify the inflamed tumor microenvironment (TME) are urgently required. Methods In the present study, we measured the levels of B7-H3, B7-H4, and major tumor-infiltrating immune cells (TIICs) using bioinformatics analyses and immunohistochemistry (IHC) staining on PAAD samples represented in the tissue microarray (TMA) format. Statistical analysis and figures exhibition were performed using R 4.1.0, SPSS 26.0, and GraphPad Prism 6.0. Results B7-H3 and B7-H4 were up-regulated in PAAD compared with para-tumor tissues, and their expression exhibited no tight correlation in PAAD tissues. B7-H3 and B7-H4 were lowly expressed in well-differentiated PAAD tissues and correlated with poorly differentiated grades. Besides, single B7-H3 or B7-H4 expression exhibited limited prognostic value, but co-deficiency of B7-H3 and B7-H4 predicted a better prognosis in PAAD. Moreover, co-deficiency of B7-H3 and B7-H4 indicated immuno-hot tumors with high CD8 + T cell infiltration. Conclusions Overall, combined B7-H3 and B7-H4 expression is a promising stratification strategy to assess prognosis and immunogenicity in PAAD, which could be used as a novel classifier in clinical practice.