Metabolic pathway-based subtyping reveals distinct microenvironmental states associated with diffuse large B-cell lymphoma outcomes

Diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) is a biologically and clinically heterogeneous disease that requires personalized clinical treatment. Assigning patients to different risk categories and cytogenetic abnormality and genetic mutation groups has been widely applied for prognostic stratification of DLBCL. Increasing evidence has demonstrated that dysregulated metabolic processes contribute to the initiation and progression of DLBCL. Metabolic competition within the tumor microenvironment is also known to influence immune cell metabolism. However, metabolism- and immune-related stratification has not been established. Here, 1660 genes involved in 84 metabolic pathways were selected and tested to establish metabolic clusters (MECs) of DLBCL. MECs established based on independent lymphoma datasets distinguished different survival outcomes. The CIBERSORT algorithm and EcoTyper were applied to quantify the relative abundance of immune cell types and identify variation in cell states for 13 lineages comprising the tumor micro environment among different MECs, respectively. Functional characterization showed that MECs were an indicator of the immune microenvironment and correlated with distinctive mutational characteristics and oncogenic signaling pathways. The novel immune-related MECs exhibited promising clinical prognostic value and potential for informing DLBCL treatment decisions.