Fang Jia, Shanshan Sun, Jiaxin Li, Wenwen Wang, Huanhuan Huang, Xiaoxiao Hu, Sheng Pan, Wuzhen Chen, Lesang Shen, Yao Yao, Siwei Zheng, Hailong Chen, Wenjie Xia, Hongjun Yuan, Jun Zhou, Xiuyan Yu, Ting Zhang, Bing Zhang, Jian Huang, Chao Ni
Hormone receptor-positive breast cancer (HR + BC) is known to be relatively insensitive to chemotherapy, and since chemotherapy has remained the major neoadjuvant therapy for HR + BC, the undetermined mechanism of chemoresistance and how chemotherapy reshapes the immune microenvironment need to be explored by high-throughput technology. By using single-cell RNA sequencing and multiplexed immunofluorescence staining analysis of HR + BC samples (paired pre- and post-neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NAC)), the levels of previously unrecognized immune cell subsets, including CD8+ T cells with pronounced expression of T-cell development (LMNA) and cytotoxicity (FGFBP2) markers, CD4+ T cells characterized by proliferation marker (ATP1B3) expression and macrophages characterized by CD52 expression, were found to be increased post-NAC, which were predictive of chemosensitivity and their antitumor function was also validated with in vitro experiments...
January 22, 2024: Cancer Letters