Fig. 2

Differential analysis of immune characteristics in different tumor regions. (A) Volcano plots (P-value and fold change) comparing gene expression between the leading edge and tumor core. Upregulated (orange) and downregulated genes (cyan) are highlighted, and differentially expressed immune-related genes (dark red) or metabolic genes (red) are labelled. Horizontal dashed line indicates adjusted P-value of 0.05, while the vertical dashed lines represent log2FC = -1 and 1. (B) Volcano plots (P-value and fold change) comparing gene expression of macrophages between the leading edge and tumor core(left) or normal tissue(right). Upregulated (orange) and downregulated genes (cyan) are highlighted. Horizontal dashed line indicates adjusted P-value of 0.05, while the vertical dashed lines represent log2FC = -1 and 1. (C) Macrophages spatial location(left) and spatial expression of SPP1 in leading edge region(right). (D) Immunohistochemical images depicting endogenous protein expression levels (brown) of SPP1 in leading edge region of CSCC sample (left) and normal sample (right), with black arrows highlighting macrophages. (E) Spatial expression of selected immune checkpoint genes (PD-L1 and IDO1) in normal tissue, leading edge region, and tumor core region. (F) Immunohistochemical images depicting endogenous protein expression levels (brown) of PD-L1 and IDO1 immune checkpoint genes in normal tissue, leading edge region, and tumor core region samples. (G) GSEA showing enrichment of Oxidative phosphorylation signalling pathwa in cancer cells from the leading edge and tumor core regions