Speakers

Tumour microenvironment comprises a multitude of tissue resident cells (fibroblasts, endothelial cells, pericytes, adipocytes, etc.) as well as infiltrating cells of the innate and adaptive immunity. Deep diving into the functional phenotypes of different cell types within cancer (by high dimensional flow cytometry and single cell RNA sequencing) has revealed the complexity of mechanisms that affect the tumour immune control. Besides the cellular composition at the single cell level, spatial analyses have provided additional layer of information regarding cellular interactions that govern patient outcomes. Recent advances in spatial technologies are closing the dimensionality gap between the single cell- and tissue-based analyses and invite a paradigm shift in how we are studying this complex disease. In this talk, I will share our recent results from a highly inflamed (hot) lung cancer cohort using unbiased spatial transcriptomics and high dimensional single-cell proteomics. We characterised immune cell phenotypes within various immune cell niches including B cell-based tertiary lymphoid structures, T cell-based clusters and tumour-surrounding myeloid cell niches that differ between short- and long-term survivors. Our analysis identifies T cell activation status, metabolic state and novel tumour-intrinsic factors with immunoregulatory functions as major factors associated with survival in patients with highly inflamed lung tumours.