Immune Cell Repertoires in Breast Cancer Patients after Adjuvant Chemotherapy

Adjuvant chemotherapy in breast cancer patients causes immune cell depletion at an age when the regenerative capacity is compromised. Successful regeneration requires the recovery of both quantity and quality of immune cell subsets. Although immune cell numbers rebound within a year post-treatment, it is unclear whether overall compositional diversity is recovered. We investigated the regeneration of immune cell complexity by comparing peripheral blood mononuclear cells from breast cancer patients ranging from one to five years post-chemotherapy with those of age-matched healthy controls using mass cytometry and T cell receptor sequencing.