The analysis of the tumor microenvironment, especially tumor-infiltrated immune cells, is essential for predicting tumor prognosis, clinical outcomes, and therapy strategies. Adrenocortical cancer is a rare nonimmunogenic malignancy in which the importance of the presence of immune cells is not well understood. In our study, we made the first attempt to understand the interplay between the histology of adrenocortical cancer and its immune landscape using cases from The Cancer Genome Atlas database and the Endocrinology Research Centre collection (Moscow, Russia). We showed that the oncocytic variant of adrenocortical cancer is characterized by intensive immune infiltration and better survival, and it is crucial to analyze the effect of immune infiltration independently for each histological variant.
Keywords: adrenocortical cancer; histological variant; oncocytic adrenocortical cancer; tumor microenvironment; tumor-infiltrated immune cells.