Immune Infiltrates in CC
By mIF and HALO system was further applied to scan the relative ratio of each target on each tissue on the TMA [36,37]. The results can be graphically presented in heatmaps and its color can be digitized (Figure 2).
In order to better understand the complex immune characteristics in CC, we quantified the immune stains by HALO system. These six immunologic markers revealed distinct positive staining ratios in 180 samples. We observed CD8 marker (19.87% ± 3.47% vs 29.65% ± 3.31%;P <0.05), CD68+ macrophages (1.23% ± 0.38% vs 0.35% ± 0.94%;P <0.05), PD-1 (39.23% ± 3.37% vs 19.06% ± 2.43%;P <0.0001), PD-L1 (51.41% ± 3.47% vs 11.62% ± 1.67%;P <0.0001) in CC with positive pLN and negative pLN respectively (Figure 3).
In a word, our results demonstrated that the positive proportion of CD68, PD-1 and PD-L1 immune cell infiltration were significantly up-regulated with pLN metastasis, while CD8 was significantly decreased, CD3 and CD56 did not changed.