An immunoediting map of human cancers

Abstract

Understanding how cancer immunoediting sculpts tumor microenvironments is essential to disentangling tumor immune evasion mechanisms and developing immunotherapies. Here, we construct a comprehensive immunoediting map of human cancers via single-cell deconvolution of 11057 tumor-derived samples across 33 cancer types from TCGA and comparison with 17382 healthy samples across 30 tissues from GTEx. The map covers >1000 different cell states across all the major immune cell types. Mast cells, megakaryocytes, macrophages, neutrophils, plasma cells and T cells are up-regulated across a wide range of tumor types while natural killer cells and platelets are down-regulated in most tumor types, suggesting common cancer immunoediting events. While tumor heterogeneity is higher than the normal corresponding tissues, significant immune homogeneity exists among different tumor types compared with the distinct immune composition among normal tissues and organs. Our study provides a new holistic perspective to understanding cancer immunoediting. Our findings may provide important hints for developing novel cancer immunotherapies, and the high-resolution immunoediting map may serve as a rich resource for further pan-cancer investigation.