ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Neurol.

Sec. Neurological Biomarkers

Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fneur.2025.1545608

Biomarker identification associated with M2 tumor-associated macrophage infiltration in glioblastoma

Provisionally accepted
  • First Affiliated Hospital of Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

Purpose: M2 phenotype tumor-associated macrophages (TAMs) can promote tumor growth, invasion, chemotherapy resistance and so on, leading to malignant progression. The aim of this study was to identify novel prognostic profiles in glioblastoma (GBM) by integrating single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) with bulk RNA-seq.We identified M2-associated genes by intersecting TAM marker genes derived from scRNA-seq with macrophage module genes from WGCNA RNA-seq data. Prognostic M2 TAM-related genes were determined using univariate Cox and LASSO regression analyses. In the following steps, prognostic characteristics, risk groups, and external validation were constructed and validated. The immune landscape of patients with GBM was examined by evaluating immune cells, functions, evasion scores, and checkpoint genes.Results: Analysis of scRNA-seq and bulk-seq data revealed 107 genes linked to M2 TAMs. Using univariate Cox and LASSO regression, 16 genes were identified as prognostic for GBM, leading to the creation and validation of a prognostic signature for GBM survival prediction.Our findings reveal the immune landscape of GBM and enhance understanding of the molecular mechanisms associated with M2 TAMs.

Keywords: Glioblastoma, tumor-associated macrophage, Prognostic signature, Immune landscape, single cell

Received: 15 Dec 2024; Accepted: 08 Apr 2025.

Copyright: © 2025 Li, Yu, Li, Yan, Yang and Liu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

* Correspondence: Chao Yang, First Affiliated Hospital of Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou, China

Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

Research integrity at Frontiers

94% of researchers rate our articles as excellent or good

Learn more about the work of our research integrity team to safeguard the quality of each article we publish.


Find out more