AbstractPurpose:Identifying molecular and immune features to guide immune checkpoint inhibitor (ICI)-based regimens remains an unmet clinical need.Experimental Design:Tissue and longitudinal blood specimens from phase III trial S1400I in patients with metastatic squamous non–small cell carcinoma (SqNSCLC) treated with nivolumab monotherapy (nivo) or nivolumab plus ipilimumab (nivo+ipi) were subjected to multi-omics analyses including multiplex immunofluorescence (mIF), nCounter PanCancer Immune Profiling Panel, whole-exome sequencing, and Olink.Results:Higher immune scores from immune gene expression profiling or immune cell infiltration by mIF were associated with response to ICIs and improved survival, except regulatory T cells, which were associated with worse overall survival (OS) for patients receiving nivo+ipi. Immune cell density and closer proximity of CD8+GZB+ T cells to malignant cells were associated with superior progression-free survival and OS. The cold immune landscape of NSCLC was associated with a higher level of chromosomal copy-number variation (CNV) burden. Patients with LRP1B-mutant tumors had a shorter survival than patients with LRP1B-wild-type tumors. Olink assays revealed soluble proteins such as LAMP3 increased in responders while IL6 and CXCL13 increased in nonresponders. Upregulation of serum CXCL13, MMP12, CSF-1, and IL8 were associated with worse survival before radiologic progression.Conclusions:The frequency, distribution, and clustering of immune cells relative to malignant ones can impact ICI efficacy in patients with SqNSCLC. High CNV burden may contribute to the cold immune microenvironment. Soluble inflammation/immune-related proteins in the blood have the potential to monitor therapeutic benefit from ICI treatment in patients with SqNSCLC.
Supplementary Figure 8. Integration analysis identifies immune features associated with progression free survivial.
Supplementary Table 3. Frequently observed phenotypes in the two multiplex immunofluorescence panels.
Supplementary Table 2. Characteristics of multiplex immunofluorescence panels using Opal 7 IHC Kit (Akoya Biosciences).
Supplementary Table 1. Clinicopathologic from total patients and according to assay.
Supplementary Figure 7. LRP1B mutation associations with immune infiltration and survival.
Although circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) assays are increasingly used to inform clinical decisions in cancer care, they have limited ability to identify the transcriptional programs that govern cancer phenotypes and their dynamic changes during the course of disease. To address these limitations, we developed a method for comprehensive epigenomic profiling of cancer from 1 ml of patient plasma. Using an immunoprecipitation-based approach targeting histone modifications and DNA methylation, we measured 1,268 epigenomic profiles in plasma from 433 individuals with one of 15 cancers. Our assay provided a robust proxy for transcriptional activity, allowing us to infer the expression levels of diagnostic markers and drug targets, measure the activity of therapeutically targetable transcription factors and detect epigenetic mechanisms of resistance. This proof-of-concept study in advanced cancers shows how plasma epigenomic profiling has the potential to unlock clinically actionable information that is currently accessible only via direct tissue sampling.
Supplementary Table 5. Overall associations between cell phenotypes by compartment in both arms.
Supplementary Table 7. Comparation of median densities between patients who experienced exceptional responses and early progression/death according to compartment.
Supplementary Table 4. Comparation of median densities between treatment arms according to compartments (n = 82)
The Cistrome Data Browser is a resource of ChIP-seq, ATAC-seq and DNase-seq data from humans and mice. It provides maps of the genome-wide locations of transcription factors, cofactors, chromatin remodelers, histone post-translational modifications and regions of chromatin accessible to endonuclease activity. Cistrome DB v3.0 contains approximately 45 000 human and 44 000 mouse samples with about 32 000 newly collected datasets compared to the previous release. The Cistrome DB v3.0 user interface is implemented as a single page application that unifies menu driven and data driven search functions and provides an embedded genome browser, which allows users to find and visualize data more effectively. Users can find informative chromatin profiles through keyword, menu, and data-driven search tools. Browser search functions can predict the regulators of query genes as well as the cell type and factor dependent functionality of potential cis-regulatory elements. Cistrome DB v3.0 expands the display of quality control statistics, incorporates sequence logos into motif enrichment displays and includes more expansive sample metadata. Cistrome DB v3.0 is available at http://db3.cistrome.org/browser.
Supplementary Figure 2. Spatial organization and cell clustering in exceptional responders.
SUMMARY:The regulation of genes by cis-regulatory elements (CREs) is complex and differs between cell types. Visual analysis of large collections of chromatin profiles across diverse cell types, integrated with computational methods, can reveal meaningful biological insights. We developed Cistrome Explorer, a web-based interactive visual analytics tool for exploring thousands of chromatin profiles in diverse cell types. Integrated with the Cistrome Data Browser database which contains thousands of ChIP-seq, DNase-seq and ATAC-seq samples, Cistrome Explorer enables the discovery of patterns of CREs across cell types and the identification of transcription factor binding underlying these patterns.AVAILABILITY AND IMPLEMENTATION:Cistrome Explorer and its source code are available at http://cisvis.gehlenborglab.org/ and released under the MIT License. Documentation can be accessed via http://cisvis.gehlenborglab.org/docs/.SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.
<p>Profiles of marked nucleosomes in Ad-Ca pairs (S1); Expression of CNOT3 and TRIM28 in CRC and normal colon epithelium (S2); Expression and requirements for CNOT3 in CRC cell lines (S3); Features of CNOT3 chromatin immunoprecipitation (S4); Clinical significance of CRCs with high CNOT3+ cell fractions or TRIM28 overexpression (S5).</p>
RNA-sequencing (RNA-seq) has become an increasingly cost-effective technique for molecular profiling and immune characterization of tumors. In the past decade, many computational tools have been developed to characterize tumor immunity from gene expression data. However, the analysis of large-scale RNA-seq data requires bioinformatics proficiency, large computational resources and cancer genomics and immunology knowledge. In this tutorial, we provide an overview of computational analysis of bulk RNA-seq data for immune characterization of tumors and introduce commonly used computational tools with relevance to cancer immunology and immunotherapy. These tools have diverse functions such as evaluation of expression signatures, estimation of immune infiltration, inference of the immune repertoire, prediction of immunotherapy response, neoantigen detection and microbiome quantification. We describe the RNA-seq IMmune Analysis (RIMA) pipeline integrating many of these tools to streamline RNA-seq analysis. We also developed a comprehensive and user-friendly guide in the form of a GitBook with text and video demos to assist users in analyzing bulk RNA-seq data for immune characterization at both individual sample and cohort levels by using RIMA.