Abstract PD2-09: Characterization of the lymphovascular invasion microenvironment reveals immune response dichotomy
Authors: Rivero-Gutiérrez Belén , Mallo Diego , Espín-Pérez Almudena , Vennam Sujay , Zhu Chunfang , Varma Sushama , Scott Greg , Foley Joseph , Hwang E Shelley , Maley Carlo , West Robert 
Published: March 2023

Background: Metastasis is the leading cause of cancer related deaths in breast cancer patients. Lymphovascular invasion represents one of the earliest stages of metastasis wherein the cells are introduced to a very different and distinct microenvironment. Methods: We leveraged spatial techniques developed for limited specimens in archival tissue to study patient matched cross-sectional tumor samples from different stages of breast neoplasia including normal breast, ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS), primary invasive carcinoma (IBC), lymphovascular invasion (LVI) and regional lymph node metastasis. We selected a set of 21 patients with ER+ breast cancer to generate cross-sectional samples of each of these stages, for a total of 331 samples. The areas of LVI were identified by a combination of H&E review and immunohistochemistry for podoplanin. We performed smart-3SEQ for gene expression profiling and light pass whole genome sequencing for DNA copy number alterations. Results: We profiled the spectrum of neoplasia for transcriptome-wide gene expression. Principal component analysis of all 252 DCIS, LVI, IBC, or metastasis samples using the top 500 genes with the highest variance demonstrated that clustering was roughly based on the diagnostic stage (i.e. DCIS, LVI, IBC, or metastasis). Differential gene expression profiling identified thousands of genes increased or decreased in expression across the transitional stages with the largest change in gene expression being the transition from normal breast to DCIS, dominated by gene expression down regulation. We next performed NMF clustering on 62 samples of LVI from 18 cases and identified two patterns of gene expression which define two subgroups. Gene ontology analysis revealed that one cluster was associated with increased proliferation and metabolism, whereas the second cluster was dominated by an immune response. When we analyzed the immune and proliferative LVI subgroups separately, we found that the immune profiles in the patient matched IBC and LVI samples from the LVI Immune cluster were similar, whereas the immune profiles in the patient matched IBC and LVI samples from the Proliferative cluster were significantly different. At the LVI stage, all immune cell populations estimated by CibersortX were decreased in the Proliferative LVI cluster. These changes were validated using immunofluorescence for proliferation (Ki67), T cells (CD3) and macrophages (CD68) on the same samples. Using the LVI centroids, we built a model that could predict the same clusters in the METABRIC IBC. Kaplan-Meier analysis showed a significant difference between groups, with the Proliferative-like IBC group having a worse prognosis than the Immune-like IBC group. Conclusions: We observed a dichotomy at the LVI stage with a more proliferative cluster that may escape the immune response and an immune cluster which has a microenvironment with a similar pattern to its primary IBC. The recognition of two groups of LVI, differing in immune association and proliferation, raises the possibility that the risk of metastasis could be different in these two groups, leading to different biological pathways of progression.

Citation Format: Belén Rivero-Gutiérrez, Diego Mallo, Almudena Espín-Pérez, Sujay Vennam, Chunfang Zhu, Sushama Varma, Greg Scott, Joseph Foley, E Shelley Hwang, Carlo Maley, Robert West. Characterization of the lymphovascular invasion microenvironment reveals immune response dichotomy [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 2022 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium; 2022 Dec 6-10; San Antonio, TX. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2023;83(5 Suppl):Abstract nr PD2-09.