Comprehensive evaluation of methodology to assess abundance of immune infiltrates in breast cancer
I Nederlof; D de Bortoli; Y Bareche; G K J Hooijer; C Sotiriou ...
Annals of Oncology, Volume 30, Issue Supplement_3, May 2019, mdz095.002, https://doi.org/10.1093/annonc/mdz095.002
Extract
Background: The immune system is critical in modulating therapeutic sensitivity and tumor progression in breast cancer patients. A plethora of methods exists to evaluate the amount and composition of tumor immune infiltrates and are used interchangeably, based on the assumption that they provide similar information. A systematic comparison of these methods, including microscopy evaluations and algorithms based on transcriptomic and methylation data, is still lacking.

Methods: We characterized stromal (str) and intra-tumoral tumor infiltrating lymphocytes (TIL) and 6 immune cell-types (CD3+, CD4+, CD8+, CD20+, CD68+, FOXP3+) using immunohistochemistry...