Systems-level immunomonitoring in children with solid tumors

Cancer is the leading cause of death from disease in children. Survival depends on surgery, cytostatic drugs, radiation, but also systemic immune responses. Factors influencing these immune responses in children of different ages and tumor types are unknown. Novel immunotherapies can enhance anti-tumor immune responses, but few children have benefited, and markers of effective responses are lacking. Here, we present a systems-level analysis of immune responses in 191 children within a population-based cohort with diverse tumors and reveal that age and tumor type shape immune responses differently. Systemic inflammation and cytotoxic T cell responses correlate with tumor mutation rates and immune cell infiltration. Clonally expanded T cell responses are rarely detected in blood or tumors at diagnosis but sometimes elicited during treatment. Expanded T cells are similarly regulated in children and adults with more immunogenic cancers. This research aims to facilitate the development of precision immunotherapies for children with cancer.

This repertoire provides processed raw data of single cell RNA sequencing of paediatric cancer patients as well as the adult data processed from public data sets. More details and scripts to reproduce each figure can be found in https://github.com/Brodinlab/ISAC1