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Updated: Jul 26, 2025
Enrichment and Characterization of the Tumor Immune and Non-immune Microenvironments in Established Subcutaneous Murine Tumors
Published on: June 7, 2018
Single-cell analysis reveals the multiple patterns of immune escape in the nasopharyngeal carcinoma microenvironment
Qianyu Lin1, Yaqi Zhou2, Jie Ma3
1Tsinghua-Berkeley Shenzhen Institute, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China.
Background:
Single-cell transcriptomics has revolutionised our understanding of the cellular composition of the tumour microenvironment (TME) in nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC). Despite this progress, a key limitation of this technique has been its inability to capture epithelial/tumour cells, which has hindered further investigation of tumour heterogeneity and immune escape in NPC.
Methods:
In this study, we aimed to address these limitations by analysing the transcriptomics and spatial characteristics of NPC tumour cells at single-cell resolution using scRNA/snRNA-seq and imaging mass cytometry techniques.
Results:
Our findings demonstrate multiple patterns of immune escape mechanisms in NPC, including the loss of major histocompatibility complex (MHC) molecules in malignant cells, induction of epithelial-mesenchymal transition in fibroblast-like malignant cells and the use of hyperplastic cells in tumour nests to protect tumour cells from immune infiltration. Additionally, we identified, for the first time, a CD8+ natural killer (NK) cell cluster that is specific to the NPC TME.
Conclusions:
These findings provide new insights into the complexity of NPC immune landscape and may lead to novel therapeutic strategies for this disease.
