Heterogeneous Tumor Microenvironment of Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer

We investigated the spatial features of surgically-removed biopsies from multiple loci in tumor masses of 15 patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). We observed that the immune microenvironment is highly spatial heterogeneous such that intra-tumoral regional variation is as large as inter-personal variation. While the local mutational burden was associated with local T cell clonal expansion, observed local anti-tumor cytotoxicity is strongly associated with local tumoral circumstance rather than TMB alone