NSCLC 肿瘤、肿瘤边缘、邻近与远端肺组织中 T 细胞库的空间异质性

A better understanding of T cells in lung cancer and their distribution across tumor-adjacent lungs and peripheral blood is needed to improve efficacy and minimize toxicity from immunotherapy to lung cancer patients.

Here, we performed CDR3 TCR sequencing of 136 samples from 20 patients with early-stage NSCLC including peripheral blood mononuclear cells, tumors, tumor edges (<1 cm from tumor), as well as adjacent lungs 1 cm, 2 cm, 5 cm, and 10 cm away from the tumor to gain insight into the spatial heterogeneity of T cells across the lungs in patients with NSCLC. PD-L1, CD4, and CD8 expression was assessed using immunohistochemical staining, and genomic features were derived by targeted sequencing of 1,021 cancer-related genes. Multiplex immunohistochemistry against PD-1, CTLA4, LAG3, and TIM3 was performed on four patients to assess T cell exhaustion.

Our study reveals a decreasing gradient in TIL Tumor Infiltrating Lymphocytes homology with tumor edge, adjacent lungs, and peripheral blood but no discernible distance-associated patterns of T cell trafficking within the adjacent lung itself. Furthermore, we show a decrease in pathogen-specific TCRs in regions with high T cell clonality and PD-L1 expression.

Exclusion in T exhaustion cells at play across the lungs of patients with NSCLC may potentially be the mechanism for lung cancer occurrence.