Fig. 1: Ileal immune parameters dictate pCC patients’ prognosis.

A Representative micrographs of (top panel) CD8⁺ T-cell infiltrates in the tumor core by immunohistochemistry (IHC) with delineation of tumor areas by dotted black lines and (bottom panel) CD3⁺ and CD4⁺ T-cell infiltrates by immunofluorescence (IF) staining in autologous ilea of two distinct pCC patients. Scale bar = 100 µm. B Heatmap showing Spearman correlation coefficients between autologous tumor and ileum immune cell densities in 53 distinct pCC patients for whom paired samples were available. *P < 0.05. IEL intra-epithelial lymphocytes, LP lamina propria, CT core of the tumor, IM tumor invasive margin. C Dendrogram and heatmap depicting the agglomerative hierarchical clustering of pCC patients (n = 83, columns) according to ileal and colonic immune gene transcription (rows) at surgery. Distance was measured with 1–Pearson correlation coefficient and agglomeration with Ward’s method. Clinical variables and tissue of origin are indicted by the corresponding color code on the top and side border, respectively. D Heatmap of gene expression patterns in autologous ileum and colon as a log₂ fold ratio (FR) between cluster 1 and cluster 2 individuals. Mann–Whitney U test: *P < 0.05; **P < 0.01; ***P < 0.001; ****P < 0.0001. E, F Kaplan–Meier curves for time to treatment failure (progression or cancer-related death) segregated according to the clustering from (C) analyzed by Mantel–Cox regression test in 83 pCC patients (E) or only in stage IV metastatic pCC patients (F).