Pan-cancer T cell atlas links a cellular stress response state to immunotherapy resistance.

ABSTRACT: Tumor-infiltrating T cells offer a promising avenue for cancer treatment, yet their states remain to be fully characterized. Here we present a single-cell atlas of T cells from 308,048 transcriptomes across 16 cancer types, uncovering previously undescribed T cell states and heterogeneous subpopulations of follicular helper, regulatory and proliferative T cells. We identified a unique stress response state, T_STR, characterized by heat shock gene expression. T_STR cells are detectable in situ in the tumor microenvironment across various cancer types, mostly within lymphocyte aggregates or potential tertiary lymphoid structures in tumor beds or surrounding tumor edges. T cell states/compositions correlated with genomic, pathological and clinical features in 375 patients

SUBMITTER: Chu Y 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11421770 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature