Altered immunophenotypic expression in the peripheral bladder cancer immune landscape .fcs files
Description
Treatments targeting the immune system only benefit a subset of bladder cancer (BC) patients. Biomarkers predictive of BC progression and response to specific therapeutic interventions are required. We evaluated whether peripheral blood immune subsets and expression of clinically relevant immune checkpoint markers are associated with clinicopathologic features of BC. Peripheral blood mononuclear cells isolated from blood collected from 23 BC patients and 9 age-matched unaffected-by-cancer control donors were assessed using a 21-parameter flow cytometry panel composed of markers of T, B, NK, and myeloid populations and immune checkpoint markers. Patients with BC had significantly lower numbers of circulating CD19+ B cells and elevated circulating CD4+CD8+ T cells compared to the control cohort. Immune checkpoint markers PD-1 and TIM-3 were elevated in the total peripheral immune cell population in BC patients. Within the BC cohort, PD-1 expression in T and myeloid cells was elevated in muscle-invasive compared to non-muscle-invasive disease. Additionally, elevated T, B and myeloid PD-1 cell surface expression was significantly associated with tumor stage, suggesting that measures of peripheral immune cell exhaustion may be a predictor of tumor progression in BC. Finally, positive correlations between expression levels of the various immune checkpoints both overall and within key peripheral blood immune subsets collected from BC patients were observed highlighting likely co-regulation of peripheral immune checkpoint expression. The peripheral blood immuno-phenotype in BC patients is altered compared to cancer-free individuals. Understanding this dysregulated immune profile will contribute to the identification of diagnostic and prognostic indicators to guide effective immune-targeted, personalized treatments. This dataset contains raw, ungated flow cytometry files in .fcs format for the PBMCs of 23 BC-affected individuals, and 9 controls examined against this panel.