Pancreatic ductal
adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is one of the most lethal
malignancies with limited treatment options. To guide the design of more effective
immunotherapy strategies, mass cytometry was employed to characterize the cellular composition of the PDAC-infiltrating immune cells. The expression of 33
protein markers was examined at the single-cell level in more than two million immune cells from four types of clinical samples, including PDAC
tumors, normal pancreatic tissues,
chronic pancreatitis tissues, and peripheral blood. Based on the analyses, we identified 23 distinct T-cell phenotypes, with some cell clusters exhibiting aberrant frequencies in the
tumors.
Programmed cell death protein 1 (PD-1) was extensively expressed in CD4+ and CD8+ T cells and coexpressed with both stimulatory and inhibitory
immune markers. In addition, we observed elevated levels of functional markers, such as CD137L and CD69, in PDAC-infiltrating immune cells. Moreover, the combination of PD-1 and CD8 was used to stratify PDAC
tumors from The
Cancer Genome Atlas database into three immune subtypes, with S1 (PD-1+CD8+) exhibiting the best prognosis. Further analysis suggested distinct molecular mechanisms for immune exclusion in different subtypes. Taken together, the single-cell
protein expression data depicted a detailed cell atlas of the PDAC-infiltrating immune cells and revealed clinically relevant information regarding useful cell phenotypes and targets for
immunotherapy development.