Fig. 6: Immunofluorescence staining of T cell and stromal markers capture the TSE score.

a Representative images of immunofluorescence staining for two T cell markers (CD4 and CD8 T cells) and two markers of stromal resident cells and their products (FAP and PDPN) according to the T cell-to-stroma enrichment (TSE) score (TSE positive, n = 7; TSE neutral, n = 8; TSE negative, n = 5). b The TSE-protein score was calculated from the densities of the four markers from (a) in analogy to the TSE-RNA score; see “Materials and methods” for details. Upper plot: box plot displaying the TSE-protein score in 18 patients with a positive, neutral, or negative TSE-RNA score. The TSE score for two patients is missing because the quantification of T cell markers was unsuccessful. Box plots show median, inter-quartile range (IQR: Q1–Q3) and whiskers (1.5xIQR from Q3 to the largest value within this range or 1.5xIQR from Q1 to the lowest value within this range). Two-sided Wilcoxon-rank sum test was applied to compare TSE-protein positive vs. TSE-protein negative samples. Lower plot: receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves of T cell markers (n = 18), stromal markers (n = 20) and the TSE-protein score (n = 18). The area under the curve (AUC) is displayed per condition. Source data are provided as a Source Data file.