Fig. 7: LCs are closer to cancer cell islands in good outcome.

a Distribution of distances from LCs to cancer islands shows pure T LCs tend to be closer to cancer islands than heterotypic LCs. Distribution of mean distances between an LC and its nearest cancer cell island shows that (b) heterotypic and (c) pure T cell LCs are closer on average to cancer cell islands in good outcome. RFS plots showing the clinical significance of mean distance between (d) heterotypic or (e) pure T cell LCs and the nearest cancer cell island. (See “Methods” for how RFS thresholds were chosen.) f Smaller heterotypic LCs tend to be closer to cancer cell islands in the good outcome as shown in the scatter plot of the average size (number of cells) of LCs vs. the shortest distance between a heterotypic LC and the nearest cancer cell island. Each point represents a patient. Blue is for good outcome and red is for poor outcome. Pearson’s r = 0.42, p = 0.04 for good outcome indicates significant correlation while r = 0.09, p = 0.6 for poor outcome. Patient cohorts for all panels in this figure are n = 24 for good outcome (blue) and n = 12 for poor outcome (red). Computation of mean distance used in plots: The mean distance is found for each patient and then the average over all patients is calculated to produce the mean distances.