Defining the immunophenotype within the clear cell renal cell carcinoma tumour microenvironment to guide immune checkpoint blockade
Defining the immunophenotype within the clear cell renal cell carcinoma tumour microenvironment to guide immune checkpoint blockade
To profile the transcriptome within the ccRCC TME, we performed ST-seq on ten fresh frozen tissue sections collected in the operating theatre from six patients with ccRCC (n = 2 para-tumour, n = 4 low-grade and n = 4 high-grade) presenting at a tertiary referral hospital from June 2021 to January 2022 (Fig. 1A). Additional clinical characteristics of the ccRCC patients at presentation include patient LG_2 with a vena cava thrombus (VCT); patient HG_1 with pleural metastases; and patient HG_3 with a third recurrent lesion (Table 1). Furthermore, for patients HG_1 and HG_3, para-tumour (pTME) tissue was collected from adjacent surgically normal margin. All six patients provided informed consent and this study received ethics approval from Metro South Human Research Ethics Committee (Reference Number HREC/16/QPAH/353 and HREC/12/QPAH/125). ST libraries were prepared by Visium Spatial Gene Expression Reagent Kits ST libraries were prepared by Visium Spatial Gene Expression Reagent Kits