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Tumour immunology

Interrogating intratumoral Treg cells

Nature Reviews Immunology volume 17, pages 4–5 (2017)Cite this article

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Regulatory T (Treg) cells are implicated in tumour growth and metastasis and in the mechanism of action of checkpoint-blocking immunotherapy, but the exact phenotype of intratumoral Treg cells has remained elusive. Two studies have now characterized the distinct molecular signature of intratumoral CD4+ Treg cells isolated from several tumour types, correlated this signature with prognosis and identified CC-chemokine receptor 8 (CCR8) as a specific marker of intratumoral Treg cells.

Characterization of the transcriptional profiles of intratumoral Treg cells identified a signature that distinguished these cells from Treg cells isolated from normal tissue or peripheral blood (both studies), and also from intratumoral T helper 1 (TH1) and TH17 cells (De Simone et al.). Gene-ontology analysis revealed that the signature was more enriched for genes involved in lymphocyte activation, among other pathways, than were the gene-expression profiles of peripheral Tregcells (both studies), and those of Treg cells from normal tissue and TH1 and TH17 cells from tumours, normal tissue or peripheral blood (De Simone et al.). Notably, the distinct transcriptional signature was shared by intratumoral Treg cells from primary colorectal, gastric, breast and NSCLC tumours, and also brain and liver metastases of NSCLC and CRC, respectively (De Simone et al.).

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References

  1. De Simone, M. et al. Transcriptional landscape of human tissue lymphocytes unveils uniqueness of tumor-infiltrating T regulatory cells. Immunity 45, 1135–1147 (2016)

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  2. Plitas, G. et al. Regulatory T cells exhibit distinct features in human breast cancer. Immunity 45, 1122–1134 (2016)

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  1. Lydia Shipman
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Shipman, L. Interrogating intratumoral Treg cells. Nat Rev Immunol 17, 4–5 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/nri.2016.137

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