Immune Cell Infiltration Analysis Reveals Distinct Macrophage Profiles in Liver Cancer Stemness Subtypes

The TCGA-LIHC cohort was analyzed using CIBERSORT to determine the level of immune cell infiltration, as illustrated in Figure 5A. The differences observed among the three stemness subtypes primarily involved the number of macrophages. In the TCGA-LIHC cohort, the C3 subtype had a significant upregulation of M0 macrophages, while M1 and M2 macrophages were significantly downregulated. Additionally, the C3 subtype had a significant decrease in the proportion of resting mast cells when compared to the C1 subtype. The proportion of CD4 memory resting cells, which are activated T cells, was also significantly reduced in the C3 subtype of the TCGA-LIHC cohort. Boxplots were used to explore the relationship between the three immune clusters, based on the ssGSEA algorithm and mRNAsi score.