Abstract 1149: Spatial transcriptomic analysis of tumor microenvironment in patients with triple negative breast cancer with residual disease after neoadjuvant chemotherapy with immune checkpoint inhibitor
Authors: Kim Ji-Yeon , Park Kyunghee , La Choi Yoon , Lee Jeong Eon , Chae Byung Joo , Yu Jonghan , Kim Seok Won , Nam Seok Jin , Ahn Jin Seok , Park Woong-Yang , Park Yeon Hee 
Published: March 2024

Recent advance of treatment strategy for triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) including immune checkpoint inhibitor improved survival outcome. Especially, adding pembrolizumab on neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NAC) increased pathologic complete response (pCR) rate at the time of curative surgery. Previous studies suggested that PD-L1 expression in both tumor and immune cells was associated with the response of pembrolizumab in TNBC, but PD-L1 expression state were not associated with pembrolizumab response in NAC setting. In addition, neoadjuvant pembrolizumab increased event-free survival (DFS) rate after NAC even though they had not achieved pCR. However, there were no biomarker for EFS increasement of using pembrolizumab. We designed prospective translational research for evaluating tumor microenvironment (TME) of residual TNBC which had treated with NAC followed by curative surgery. We collected formalin fixed paraffin embedded (FFPE) surgical specimens after NAC with or without pembrolizumab. TNBC samples were used for spatial transcriptomics (ST) analysis, with H&E staining and inspection by an experienced pathologist. Libraries were prepared using Visium Spatial Gene Expression Reagent Kit protocol for FFPE (10x Genomics). Sequencing was conducted on the NovaSeq 6000 System (Illumina). From February 2023 to October 2023, 23 TNBC specimens from 22 patients were collected. Twenty specimens were breast tissues and three were lymph nodes, 18 TNBCs had been treated with NAC with pembrolizumab and four with only NAC, and five had residual cancer burden(RCB) class I, 11 of RCB class II and one of RCB class III. We collected BC and LN samples from BC with class III. Of 23 samples, we performed spatial transcriptomic analysis in 12 samples. In intrinsic subtyping, eight specimens were categorized into normal like, two of basal like and two of luminal A BC subtypes. In TNBC subtyping, mesenchymal stem cell like (MSL) were in six specimens, three of stem cell like (SL), two of luminal androgen receptor (LAR) and one of immunomodulatory (IM). We also performed cell type annotation with unsupervised method and categorized into 11 cell types; three cancer cell types, two macrophages, B and T cells, adipocytes, normal epithelium and perivascular-like and cancer associated fibroblasts. Among these 11 cell types, increasement of immune cells including B cells, T cells and macrophage proportions was associated with pembrolizumab treatment in NAC setting. In our study, we evaluated TME state of TNBC after NAC with or without pembrolizumab. We suggested that MSL or SL TNBC subtypes were associated with residual disease after NAC regardless of pembrolizumab use and pembrolizumab may recruit more immune cells in TME of TNBC. For concreating our suggestion, further analyses would be warranted.

Citation Format: Ji-Yeon Kim, Kyunghee Park, Yoon La Choi, Jeong Eon Lee, Byung Joo Chae, Jonghan Yu, Seok Won Kim, Seok Jin Nam, Jin Seok Ahn, Woong-Yang Park, Yeon Hee Park. Spatial transcriptomic analysis of tumor microenvironment in patients with triple negative breast cancer with residual disease after neoadjuvant chemotherapy with immune checkpoint inhibitor [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2024; Part 1 (Regular Abstracts); 2024 Apr 5-10; San Diego, CA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2024;84(6_Suppl):Abstract nr 1149.