Fig. 5: The CXCL12–CXCR4 axis reduces the cytotoxic activity of CD8+ T cells and natural killer cells in high-stromal tumor samples. | Communications Biology

Fig. 5: The CXCL12–CXCR4 axis reduces the cytotoxic activity of CD8+ T cells and natural killer cells in high-stromal tumor samples.

From: Single-cell analysis reveals the stromal dynamics and tumor-specific characteristics in the microenvironment of ovarian cancer

Fig. 5

Statistically significant interactions between a CA-MSCs, b fibroblasts, and other cell types using the CellPhoneDB pipeline. Size indicates p-values, and color indicates the means of the receptor-ligand pairs between the two tumor groups. c Violin plots showing the expression of CXCL12 in CA-MSCs and fibroblasts by high-/low-stromal group. The p-values are computed from the two-sided Wilcoxon tests, adjusted based on Bonferroni correction using all genes in the dataset. Statistical significance is coded by the following symbols. p-value < 0.1, *p-value < 0.05, **p-value < 0.01, and ***p-value < 0.001. d Violin plots showing the expression of CXCR4 in CD8+ T cells and natural killer (NK) cells by high-/low-stromal group. e Violin plots showing the expression of CXCR3, GZMB, IFNG, and IL2RB in CD8+ T cells and f in NK cells by high-/low-stromal group. g Summary of enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) of GZMB and IFNG secretion in splenic a-CD3/CD28+Il-2–activated CD8+ T cell (Pos Cont), recombinant CXCL12-treated cells, and CD8+ T cells cultured with conditioned medium (CM) from CA-MSCs with or without anti-CXCR4 Ab. Unstimulated CD8+ T cells were used as negative control (Neg Cont).

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