Fig. 1: Overall distribution of immune cell populations in NI and I TDLNs, and tumor. | Nature Communications

Fig. 1: Overall distribution of immune cell populations in NI and I TDLNs, and tumor.

From: Tumor invasion in draining lymph nodes is associated with Treg accumulation in breast cancer patients

Fig. 1

a Flowchart of the study design. Non-invaded (NI) and invaded (I) TDLNs, and the primary tumor (T) were collected and samples were split and processed for hematoxylin–eosin staining or for flow cytometry analysis, functional tests or transcriptome and TCR sequencing. b A representative flow cytometric analysis of EPCAM+ CD45+ cell populations in NI and I TDLNs and primary tumors. c Representative hematoxylin–eosin staining of NI TDLNs (left panel), I TDLNs (middle panel), and primary tumors (right panel) (P: peritumor area; T: tumor area; arrows: leukocytes) from one out of three independent experiments with similar results. d Samples were stained with EpCAM, CD45, CD19, CD3, CD8, CD4, and FOXP3 and analyzed by FACS, and shown is a t-SNE map displaying randomly selected cells from TDLNs and primary tumors. e t-SNE map showing the FlowSOM-guided clustering of NI, I, and T cells. Each color represents a cluster and is associated with a different immune population. f Frequencies of Tregs among CD45+ cells in TDLNs and tumor (NI vs I TDLNs p = 0.0134; NI TDLN vs T p = 0.004; I TDLN vs T p = 0.0494). Wilcoxon matched-pairs signed rank test, *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01 (n = 14).

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