Single-cell and spatial transcriptome analyses revealed cell heterogeneity and immune environment alternations in metastatic axillary lymph nodes in breast cancer

• Published in: Cancer Immunology, Immunotherapy Vol. 72; no. 3; pp. 679 - 695
• Main Authors: Mao, Xiaofan, Zhou, Dan, Lin, Kairong, Zhang, Beiying, Gao, Juntao, Ling, Fei, Zhu, Lewei, Yu, Sifei, Chen, Peixian, Zhang, Chuling, Zhang, Chunguo, Ye, Guolin, Fong, Simon, Chen, Guoqiang, Luo, Wei
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Berlin/Heidelberg Springer Berlin Heidelberg 01-03-2023; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Antigens; Breast cancer; Breast Neoplasms; Cancer Research; CD8 antigen; Cell interactions; Circulatory system; Cytotoxicity; Female; Fibroblasts; Gene Expression Profiling; Humans; Immunology; Inflammation; Leukocytes (neutrophilic); Leukocytes, Mononuclear; Lymph nodes; Lymph Nodes - pathology; Lymphatic system; Lymphocytes B; Lymphocytes T; Macrophages; Medicine; Medicine & Public Health; Metastases; Metastasis; Myeloid cells; Oncology; Original; Original Article; Peripheral blood mononuclear cells; Prognosis; T cell receptors; Transcriptomes; Tumor Microenvironment; Immune and stromal cell heterogeneity; Metastatic lymph nodes; Breast cancer; Single-cell and spatial sequencing; Circulating immune system
• ISSN: 0340-7004; 1432-0851
• DOI: 10.1007/s00262-022-03278-2

Background
Tumor heterogeneity plays essential roles in developing cancer therapies, including therapies for breast cancer (BC). In addition, it is also very important to understand the relationships between tumor microenvironments and the systematic immune environment.
Methods
Here, we performed single-cell, VDJ sequencing and spatial transcriptome analyses on tumor and adjacent normal tissue as well as axillar lymph nodes (LNs) and peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) from 8 BC patients.
Results
We found that myeloid cells exhibited environment-dependent plasticity, where a group of macrophages with both M1 and M2 signatures possessed high tumor specificity spatially and was associated with worse patient survival. Cytotoxic T cells in tumor sites evolved in a separate path from those in the circulatory system. T cell receptor (TCR) repertoires in metastatic LNs showed significant higher consistency with TCRs in tumor than those in nonmetastatic LNs and PBMCs, suggesting the existence of common neo-antigens across metastatic LNs and primary tumor cites. In addition, the immune environment in metastatic LNs had transformed into a tumor-like status, where pro-inflammatory macrophages and exhausted T cells were upregulated, accompanied by a decrease in B cells and neutrophils. Finally, cell interactions showed that cancer-associated fibroblasts (CAFs) contributed most to shaping the immune-suppressive microenvironment, while CD8
+
cells were the most signal-responsive cells.
Conclusions
This study revealed the cell structures of both micro- and macroenvironments, revealed how different cells diverged in related contexts as well as their prognostic capacities, and displayed a landscape of cell interactions with spatial information.