Fig. 7: Validation of the Treg subtypes in human PDAC samples.

a Scatter plot showing the expression levels of KLRG1 and TNFRSF18 in the Treg cells of human PDAC samples from the same patient (n = 1). Normal, pancreatic tissues located distant from the tumor; Adj. normal, adjacent normal samples near the tumor; Tumor, tumor sample. b Histograms with corresponding percentages showing the expression levels of CTLA-4 in the FMO control, KLRG1⁻ Treg, KLRG1⁺ Treg, TNFRSF18⁻ Treg, and TNFRSF18⁺ Treg, respectively. c Representative images of TNFRSF18⁺ Treg (CD4⁺FOXP3⁺TNFRSF18⁺ cells) in the tumor sample of human PDAC tissue microarray (TMA) slice using mIHC. Images shown are representative of 83 pairs of adjacent normal and tumor samples on the TMA slide. Scale bar, 200 μm and 10 μm for the left and right images, respectively. d Proportion of TNFRSF18⁺ Treg among CD4⁺ T cells in the PDAC TMA slide using mIHC (n = 81 pairs of adjacent normal and tumor samples). Significance was calculated by a two-tailed Student’s t-test. e Survival analysis of TNFRSF18⁺ Treg in PDAC TMA cohort (n = 83 PDAC tumor samples). The median proportion of TNFRSF18⁺ Treg was used as the cutoff to define the low and high-expression groups. P-values were determined by log-rank test. For sample information, see Supplementary Data 5. Source data are provided as a Source Data file.