Sorbonne Université, UMRS 1135, Faculté de Médecine Sorbonne Université, Paris, France.
Laboratory "Immune Microenvironment and Immunotherapy", INSERM U1135, Centre d'Immunologie et des Maladies Infectieuses Paris (CIMI-Paris), Paris, France.
Front Immunol. 2021 Mar 8;12:626776. doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2021.626776. eCollection 2021.
The presence of tertiary lymphoid structures (TLS) in the tumor microenvironment is associated with better clinical outcome in many cancers. In non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), we have previously showed that a high density of B cells within TLS (TLS-B cells) is positively correlated with tumor antigen-specific antibody responses and increased intratumor CD4 T cell clonality. Here, we investigated the relationship between the presence of TLS-B cells and CD4 T cell profile in NSCLC patients. The expression of immune-related genes and proteins on B cells and CD4 T cells was analyzed according to their relationship to TLS-B density in a prospective cohort of 56 NSCLC patients. We observed that tumor-infiltrating T cells showed marked differences according to TLS-B cell presence, with higher percentages of naïve, central-memory, and activated CD4 T cells and lower percentages of both immune checkpoint (ICP)-expressing CD4 T cells and regulatory T cells (Tregs) in the TLS-B tumors. A retrospective study of 538 untreated NSCLC patients showed that high TLS-B cell density was even able to counterbalance the deleterious impact of high Treg density on patient survival, and that TLS-B Treg patients had the best clinical outcomes. Overall, the correlation between the density of TLS-B tumors with early differentiated, activated and non-regulatory CD4 T cell cells suggest that B cells may play a central role in determining protective T cell responses in NSCLC patients.
肿瘤微环境中三级淋巴结构 (TLS) 的存在与许多癌症的更好的临床结果相关。在非小细胞肺癌 (NSCLC) 中,我们之前曾表明,TLS 内 B 细胞的高密度 (TLS-B 细胞) 与肿瘤抗原特异性抗体反应和增加的肿瘤内 CD4 T 细胞克隆性呈正相关。在这里,我们研究了 NSCLC 患者中 TLS-B 细胞与 CD4 T 细胞表型之间的关系。根据 56 名 NSCLC 患者前瞻性队列中 TLS-B 密度与免疫相关基因和蛋白质在 B 细胞和 CD4 T 细胞上的表达关系进行了分析。我们观察到,根据 TLS-B 细胞的存在,肿瘤浸润性 T 细胞表现出明显的差异,具有更高比例的幼稚、中央记忆和活化的 CD4 T 细胞,以及更低比例的表达免疫检查点 (ICP) 的 CD4 T 细胞和调节性 T 细胞 (Treg) 在 TLS-B 肿瘤中。对 538 名未经治疗的 NSCLC 患者的回顾性研究表明,高 TLS-B 细胞密度甚至能够抵消高 Treg 密度对患者生存的有害影响,并且 TLS-B Treg 患者具有最佳的临床结局。总体而言,TLS-B 肿瘤密度与早期分化、活化和非调节性 CD4 T 细胞之间的相关性表明,B 细胞可能在决定 NSCLC 患者保护性 T 细胞反应中起核心作用。