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Updated: Dec 9, 2025
Mass Cytometry Analysis of Systemic and Local Immune Responses in Hepatocellular Carcinoma
Published on: April 25, 2025
CyTOF mass cytometry reveals phenotypically distinct human blood neutrophil populations differentially correlated
Yanfang Peipei Zhu1, Tobias Eggert1, Daniel J Araujo1
1Inflammation Biology, La Jolla Institute for Immunology, La Jolla, California, USA.
Background:
Understanding neutrophil heterogeneity and its relationship to disease progression has become a recent focus of cancer research. Indeed, several studies have identified neutrophil subpopulations associated with protumoral or antitumoral functions. However, this work has been hindered by a lack of widely accepted markers with which to define neutrophil subpopulations.
Methods:
To identify markers of neutrophil heterogeneity in cancer, we used single-cell cytometry by time-of-flight (CyTOF) coupled with high-dimensional analysis on blood samples from treatment-naïve patients with melanoma.
Results:
Our efforts allowed us to identify seven blood neutrophil clusters, including two previously identified individual populations. Interrogation of these neutrophil subpopulations revealed a positive trend between specific clusters and disease stage. Finally, we recapitulated these seven blood neutrophil populations via flow cytometry and found that they exhibited diverse capacities for phagocytosis and reactive oxygen species production in vitro.
Conclusions:
Our data provide a refined consensus on neutrophil heterogeneity markers, enabling a prospective functional evaluation in patients with solid tumors.
