Fig. 1.

Association of ACE2 expression with immune signatures and immunotherapy response in cancer. (A) Immune-related pathways upregulated in high- (upper third) versus low-ACE2-expression-level (bottom third) tumors in at least 5 cancer types identified by GSEA [25] (adjusted p-value (FDR) < 0.05). (B) Significant positive correlations of ACE2 expression levels with the ratios of immune-promoting/immune-inhibiting cytokines in pan-cancer and in 12 individual cancer types. The Pearson correlation coefficient (r) and p- or FDR-value are shown. (C) The positive expression correlation between ACE2 and PD-L1 in pan-cancer and in 6 individual cancer types. (D) Higher rate of immunotherapy response in the high-ACE2-expression-level (> median) than in the low-ACE2-expression-level (< median) tumors in four cancer cohorts receiving immune check point blockade th.erapy. (E) Kaplan-Meier survival curves showing better survival in high-ACE2-expression-level (> median) than in low-ACE2-expression-level (< median) cancer patients with immune checkpoint blockade therapy. The log-rank test p-value is shown. (F) Correlations between pathway activity and PD-L1 expression levels in pan-cancer and in 13 individual cancer types. The Spearman correlation coefficient (ρ) and FDR-value are shown. FDR: false discovery rate. * FDR < 0.05; ** FDR < 0.01; *** FDR < 0.001; ns: not significant. They also apply to the following figures.