Compartment-specific tumor-infiltrating immune cells and prognosis in breast cancer

Abstract:: Breast cancer immune response is important to patient outcome, but the prognostic interaction between tissue-infiltrating immune cell (TIIC) types is not well-characterized. We evaluated the associations between CD8+, FOXP3+, CD20+, and CD163+ TIICs and breast cancer-specific survival (BCSS). We developed an AI in Halo™ to score TIIC percentage by compartment (overall, stromal, or intra-tumoral) in 99,051 microarray images from 12,285 female breast cancers. The associations between log-transformed TIIC scores and BCSS were assessed using Cox regression. CD8+ and FOXP3+ TIICs were associated with better BCSS in ER-negative disease; CD8+ and CD20+ were associated with a better prognosis in ER positive disease; and CD163+ TIICS were associated with a poorer prognosis in ER positive disease in multi-marker models. These results may have implications for breast cancer immunotherapy.

Authors:: AJ Bernstein, R Keeman, A Hurson, FM Blows, MK Bolla, JL Miller, RL Milne, H Horlings, AJ van den Broek, C Bodelon, JM Hodge, AV Patel, LR Teras, F Canzian, R Kaaks, H Brenner, B Schöttker, S Behrens, J Chang-Claude, TM DiplPsych, N Obi, FJ Couch, HR Ali, C Caldas, I Andrulis, G Glendon, AM Mulligan, W Mesker, A Jager, A Heemskerk-Gerritsen, P Devilee, SM Lawrence, J Lissowska, K Mutreja, T Ahearn, S Chanock, MA Duggan, D Eccles, JL Jones, W Tapper, A Hollestelle, M Hooning, J Martens, CHM van Deurzen, A Cox, SS Cross, M Hartman, J Li, TC Putti, U Hamann, M Rashid, A Jakubowska, N Camp, MH Cessna, AB de Gonzalez, K Bialkowska, J Gronwald, J Lubiński, S Yadav, P Lio, DF Easton, M Abubakar, M Garcia-Closas, PDP Pharoah, MK Schmidt

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