Characterization of the tumor-infiltrating immune repertoire in muscle invasive bladder cancer

Abstract

Introduction: Muscle-invasive bladder cancer (MIBC) is a heterogeneous disease with several taxonomic molecular subtypes showing different genetic, clinical, and epidemiological profiles. It has been suggested that MIBC-subtypes follow different tumorigenesis pathways playing decisive roles at different stages of tumor development, resulting in distinct tumor microenvironment containing both innate and adaptive immune cells (T and B lymphocytes). We aim to characterize the MIBC tumor microenvironment by analyzing the tumor-infiltrating B and T cell repertoire according to the taxonomic molecular subtypes.

Methods: RNAseq data from 396 MIBC samples included in TCGA were considered. The subtype information was collected from the international consensus taxonomic classification describing six subtypes: Basal/Squamous-like (Ba/Sq), Luminal papillary (LumP), Luminal non-Specify (LumNS), Luminal unstable (LumU), Stroma-rich, and Neuroendocrine-like (NE-like). Using MiXCR, we mapped the RNA read sequences to their respective B-cell receptor (BCR) and T-cell receptor (TCR) clonotypes. To evaluate the BCR and TCR differences among subtypes, we compared diversity measures (richness and diversity) using a Wilcoxon test and we performed a network analysis to characterize the clonal expansion. For the survival analysis stratified by subtypes, Cox regression models adjusted for age, region, and pathological stage were performed.

Results: Overall, we found different patterns of tumor-infiltrating immune repertoire among the different MIBC subtypes. Stroma-rich and Ba/Sq tumors showed the highest BCR and TCR infiltration while LumP showed the lowest. In addition, we observed that the Ba/Sq and Stroma-rich tumors were more clonally expanded than the Luminal subtypes. Moreover, higher TCR richness and diversity were significantly associated with better survival in the Stroma-rich and Ba/Sq subtypes.

Discussion: This study provides evidence that MIBC subtypes present differences in the tumor microenvironment, in particular, the Ba/Sq and the Stroma-rich are related with a higher tumoral-infiltrating immune repertoire, which seems to be translated into better survival. Determining the causes of the different tumoral-infiltrating immune repertoire according to the MIBC molecular subtypes will help to improve our understanding of the disease and the distinct responses to immunotherapy of MIBC.

Keywords: B-cell repertoire; T-cell repertoire; muscle invasive bladder cancer (MIBC); subtyping; tumor infiltration; tumor microenevironment.