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Updated: Aug 6, 2025

Cigarette Smoke Exposure in Mice using a Whole-Body Inhalation System

Cigarette Smoke Exposure in Mice using a Whole-Body Inhalation System

Published on: October 22, 2020

Gender differences in smoking-induced changes in the tumor immune microenvironment.

Arghavan Alisoltani¹, Xinru Qiu², Lukasz Jaroszewski²

¹Division of Biomedical Sciences, University of California Riverside School of Medicine, Riverside, CA, USA; Department of Microbiology-Immunology, Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University, Chicago, IL, USA.

Archives of Biochemistry and Biophysics

|March 18, 2023

Summary

Smoking impacts cancer immunity differently in men and women. This study reveals gender-specific immune cell changes in smokers, particularly increased plasma cells in women, impacting immunotherapy strategies.

Keywords:

Immune cell types Single-cell RNA-seq Tobacco smoking Tumor microenvironment

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Area of Science:

Oncology
Immunology
Genomics

Background:

Smoking is a known carcinogen and affects cancer progression via the immune system.
Gender influences cancer prevalence and outcomes, but its interaction with smoking's immune effects is unclear.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate gender-specific effects of smoking on the tumor immune microenvironment.
To analyze immune subtypes and cell populations in male and female smokers using large-scale cancer datasets.

Main Methods:

Analysis of The Cancer Genomic Atlas (TCGA) datasets (n=2724).
Validation using Expression Project for Oncology (expO) bulk RNA-seq (n=1118) and single-cell RNA-seq (n=14) datasets.
Comparison of immune subtypes and immune cell abundance between smokers and never-smokers, stratified by gender.

Main Results:

Female smokers showed altered C1 and C2 immune subtypes, while male smokers had a decreased C6 subtype.
Gender-specific differences in immune cell populations were observed in smokers across TCGA and expO datasets.
Increased plasma cell populations were a consistent marker in smokers, especially current female smokers.
Single-cell data confirmed gender- and immune cell type-specific gene expression changes due to smoking.
Changes in plasma cell populations correlated more strongly with survival in female smokers.

Conclusions:

Smoking induces distinct immune microenvironment alterations in female and male cancer patients.
Plasma cell changes are a key gender-specific smoking-related immune signature.
Findings support personalized immunotherapy strategies for women smokers based on their unique tumor immune profiles.