Fig. 2: MAIT cells are more abundant in responders as revealed by scRNA-seq.

A UMAP plot depicting CD8⁺ T-cell heterogeneity. Cells are colored according to the eight clusters defined in an unsupervised manner. B Heatmap displaying scaled-expression values of discriminative gene set per cluster related to CD3⁺CD8⁺ T cells that passed quality control. A list of the most representative genes is shown per each cluster (left). N, naive; EMRA, effector memory expressing CD45RA; TM, transitional memory; M, memory; EM, effector memory; MAIT, mucosal-associated invariant T cells. C Proportion of activated effector memory (EM) CD8⁺ T cells at different time points (left) and differential gene expression in this cluster between responders and non-responders at T2 (right). p-values of the differential expression analyses are reported in source tables. Only genes differentially expressed are reported in the figure. Statistical analysis by Mann–Whitney nonparametric test, Bonferroni’s multiple comparisons test; *p = 0.046. D Proportion of MAIT cells and differential gene expression of this cluster between responders and non-responders at T0, T1, and T2 (right). p-values of the differential expression analyses are reported in source tables. Only genes differentially expressed are reported in the figure. Data represent individual values, mean (center bar) ± SEM (upper and lower bars). Statistical analysis by two-sided Mann–Whitney nonparametric test, Bonferroni’s multiple comparisons test; if not indicated, p-value is not significant. *p = 0.023; **p = 0.0012. Source data are provided as a Source Data file. T0 = before therapy, T1 = after 1 cycle of therapy, T2 = after two cycles of therapy. Individual measurements of NR = 8, R = 11.