Flow Cytometry of Diffuse Large B-Cell Lymphoma (Fortessa cohort)

This dataset contains 13- or 14-color flow cytometry data from 151 diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLB) diagnostic biopsy samples. Each sample was stained with a 13- or 14-antibody T cell panel and data were acquired on a BD LSR Fortessa instrument. The file naming format is "ForT_DLB_A1234" where "For" = Fortessa, "T" = T cell panel, "DLB" = diffuse large B-cell lymphoma, and "A1234" = unique sample identifier.

Diffuse large B-cell lymphoma is a common malignancy of mature B cells with heterogeneous outcomes. Prior studies have defined poor prognosis subtypes by features such as cell-of-origin; however, the role of the immune microenvironment in defining clinical outcomes is less clear. Here we used highly dimensional mass and flow cytometry with up to 40 and 22 antibody markers, respectively, to derive a single cell-resolved map of the tumor ecosystem encompassing both B- and T-cell compartments, along with reactive lymph node controls. Unlike our recent findings in follicular lymphoma (FL), B-cell phenotypes were largely unique to each patient and intratumoral diversity was neither prominent nor correlated with clinical outcome. Among tumor infiltrating T-cells, multidimensional analysis yielded 23-25 distinct clusters representing the full spectrum of activation/maturation states including terminally differentiated subsets which identified patients with inferior clinical outcome amongst a discovery cohort of 123 patients. Importantly, this observation was validated in an independent cohort of 151 patients using a single marker of terminal differentiation, CD57, in combination with routine CD4/CD8 T cell subsetting markers thus simplifying translation to routine clinical practice. The significance of CD8+ CD57+ T-cells was independent of cell-of-origin classification, suggesting this immune response feature is relevant across DLBCL subtypes. T-cell profiling can thus provide insight into potential tumor/immune cell interactions and may inform selection of immune-directed therapies.