Fig. 3

Stromal KDM2A was associated with infiltrated CD163 + M2 macrophages in the breast tumor microenvironment. A Flowchart of analyzing gene expression profiles of breast tumor samples obtained from the TCGA database. The abundance of stromal and infiltrated immune cells in each breast tumor sample was assessed using ESTIMATEScore, StromalScore, and ImmuneScore. B According to ESTIMATEScore, the samples were divided into tumor-dominant group and TME-dominant group, and the relative expression levels of CD163 in the two groups were analyzed. C The abundance of CD163 + cells was analyzed between the two groups and further stratified by ImmuneScore. D The correlation between the stromal KDM2A and CD163⁺ M2 macrophage was evaluated by the Person’s correlation coefficient in the stromal and immune cell-high group. The I:S ratio was calculated as the ratio of ImmuneScore to StromalScore and used to represent immune and stromal content in the TME-dominant group. Differences were found to be statistically significant at * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, and *** p < 0.001