Du Xue, Zhou Zhe, Shao Yun, Qian Kun, Wu Yongfang, Zhang Jun, Cui Miao, Wang Jingjing, Wang Shengqi, Tai Yanhong
Beijing Institute of Radiation Medicine, Beijing, PR China.
Department of Pathology, Fifth Medical Center of Chinese PLA General Hospital, Beijing, PR China.
NPJ Breast Cancer. 2022 Feb 28;8(1):26. doi: 10.1038/s41523-022-00389-y.
Currently, tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) in invasive breast cancers are assessed solely on the basis of their number, whereas their spatial distribution is rarely investigated. Therefore, we evaluated TILs in 579 patients with invasive breast cancer of no special type (IBC-NST) with a focus on their spatial distributions in tumor center (TC) and invasive margin (IM). We also assessed a new factor, namely para-tumor infiltrating lymphocytes (PILs) in the para-tumor lobular area (Para). Five immunoarchitectural patterns (IPs) were observed, which were significantly associated with clinicopathological features, especially molecular subtypes, histological grades, clinical stages, and programmed death-ligand 1 (PD-L1) expression. High-TIL density (IP1/2) correlated with favorable disease-free survival (DFS) in TNBC patients (p = 0.04), but opposite results were observed for luminal B subtype patients (both the lowest TIL and PIL densities (IP5) correlated with good DFS, p = 0.013). Luminal B patients with high TILs in the IM and low TILs in the TC (IP3) exhibited the worst DFS, whereas those with low TILs (similar to IP5) and high PILs (IP4) exhibited poor DFS. We also identified TIL subpopulations with significantly different IPs. Our findings suggest that IP can be a potential prognostic factor for tumor immunity in IBC.
目前，浸润性乳腺癌中的肿瘤浸润淋巴细胞（TILs）仅根据其数量进行评估，而它们的空间分布很少被研究。因此，我们评估了579例非特殊类型浸润性乳腺癌（IBC-NST）患者的TILs，重点关注它们在肿瘤中心（TC）和浸润边缘（IM）的空间分布。我们还评估了一个新因素，即肿瘤旁小叶区域（Para）的肿瘤旁浸润淋巴细胞（PILs）。观察到五种免疫结构模式（IPs），它们与临床病理特征显著相关，尤其是分子亚型、组织学分级、临床分期和程序性死亡配体1（PD-L1）表达。高TIL密度（IP1/2）与三阴性乳腺癌（TNBC）患者的无病生存期（DFS）良好相关（p = 0.04），但在腔面B亚型患者中观察到相反的结果（最低的TIL和PIL密度（IP5）均与良好的DFS相关，p = 0.013）。IM中TIL高而TC中TIL低的腔面B患者（IP3）DFS最差，而TIL低（类似于IP5）且PIL高的患者（IP4）DFS较差。我们还鉴定出具有显著不同IPs的TIL亚群。我们的研究结果表明，IP可能是IBC中肿瘤免疫的潜在预后因素。
