Fig. 4

Combination of α-SMA⁺ CAFs and CD163⁺ MØs at the ESCC invasive front prevent immune invasion. A/B Unsupervised clustering of all cell phenotypes in the IMC data of ESCC invasive front tissue with (n = 5) or without (n = 5) α-SMA⁺ CAFs based on their biomarker expression. Cell phenotypes were visualized with heatmaps. C Representative IMC images of ESCC invasive front tissue with or without α-SMA⁺ CAFs. Each image in the left was rendered with a selection of different markers (blue: nucleus, yellow: epithelial cell, magenta: α-SMA⁺ CAFs or vimentin⁺ fibroblasts, white: CD163⁺ MØs, red: CD4⁺ T cell, green: CD8⁺ T cell, cyan: granzyme B⁺ immune cells). Scale bar = 100 μm. D Comparison of tumor infiltrating immunocytes for each cell subtype between the ESCC invasive front tissue with (n = 5) or without (n = 5) α-SMA⁺ CAFs (non-parametric Mann–Whitney). E The trend lines display the patient immune cell subtype pattern of change. Dense presence of CD163⁺ MØs in the ESCC invasive front with α-SMA⁺ CAFs tends to reduce the number of tumor-infiltrating immune cells (granzyme B⁺ immune cells, CD4⁺ and CD8⁺ T cells)