Fig. 2: Tumors with decreased collagen have increased CD8⁺ TILs and decreased exhausted CD8⁺ TILs.

a Experimental schema illustrating immune assessment of 393P or 344SQ KP syngeneic tumors with LOXL2 knockdown or enzymatic inhibition. Tumors were collected and analyzed 5 weeks following subcutaneous implantation. Ellagic acid LOXL2 inhibitor was administered through mice feed 1-week following tumor implantation. b Quantification of lung metastatic surface nodules for indicated tumor groups after 5 weeks of tumor growth; 393P and 344SQ-shLOXL2 n = 5 mice per group; 344SQ Vec Ctrl and EA feed n = 4 mice per group. c Ratio of moles of DHLNL, HLNL, and d-Pyr collagen crosslinks per mole of total collagen analyzed by mass spectrometry in 344SQ tumors treated with EA feed LOXL2 inhibitor or LOXL2 shRNA; n = 3 tumors per treatment group. Data presented as mean +/− SD. Statistics calculated as a two-tailed student’s t-test between different two groups from two separate experiments as denoted by a dashed-red line. d Left: Representative FACS plots of indicated tumor cell suspensions for percentage of CD8⁺ T cells gated from CD45⁺CD3⁺ cells. Right: Quantification of percentage of total CD8⁺ T cells for each individual tumor sample; 393P and 344SQ-shLOXL2 n = 5 mice per group; 344SQ Vec Ctrl and EA feed n = 4 mice per group. e Left: Representative FACS plots of indicated tumor cell suspensions for percentage of PD-1⁺TIM-3⁺ cells gated from CD8⁺ T cells in (d). Right: Quantification of percentage of PD-1⁺TIM-3⁺ CD8⁺ T cells for each individual tumor sample; 393P and 344SQ-shLOXL2 n = 5 mice per group; 344SQ Vec Ctrl and EA feed n = 4 mice per group. All data presented as mean +/− SD. Statistics calculated using a one-way ANOVA post hoc Tukey test.