immuno-oncology

Paula Voabil,et al, Nature Medicine, 2021.
Dr. Paula Voabil and colleagues used a patient derived tumor fragment platform to investigate immune responses immediately following PD-1 blockade. The Tissue Classifier Add-on and the Multiplex IHC module of HALO^® were used in this publication to quantify immune biomarkers in the tumor and stroma, contributing to their conclusion that the ability of tumors to respond to PD-1 blockage correlates with the ability of intratumoral immune cells to be reactivated by the blockade.

Jules Russick, et al, Journal for ImmunoTherapy of Cancer, 2020.
Natural killer (NK) cells are known to have cytotoxic effector functions in tumor immunosurveillance. More recently, evidence of a second potentially inhibitory or regulatory role have emerged. Here, Russick et al compared expression patterns of NK cells inside tumors to nontumoral NK cells to understand their inhibitory functions in the context of the non-small cell lung carcinoma (NSCLC) tumor microenvironment (TME). These studies identified a novel and specific gene signature of NK cells dysregulation in NSCLC that suggests that the TME may induce suppressive NK cells. HALO image analysis software was leveraged to quantify CD8 expression of formalin fixed paraffin embedded NSCLC sections with CD8 immunohistochemistry and a hematoxylin counterstain. While the presence of CD8 was previously known to be associated with good clinical outcomes, Russick and colleagues uncovered a more complex relationship where patients with low CD8+ T cells and high NK cell density had good outcomes, and those with high CD8+ T cells and high NK cell density had poor outcomes.