Tumour-infiltrating lymphocytes: from prognosis to treatment selection

2022/12/23 by Koen Brummel, Anneke L. Eerkens, Marco de Bruyn +1 · 240 citations
Immunology and Microbiology · Medicine · #Blockade #Cancer #Cancer Immunotherapy and Biomarkers #Clinical trial #Computer science #Immune Cell Function and Interaction #Immune checkpoint #Immunology #Immunotherapy #Immunotherapy and Immune Responses #Internal medicine #Machine learning #Medicine #Oncology #Predictive value #Tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes #Value (mathematics)

paper · pdf · doi:10.1038/s41416-022-02119-4

published in British Journal of Cancer 128(3), 451-458 (Springer Nature)

openalex publication_date 2022/12/23 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/04

Abstract

Tumour-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) are considered crucial in anti-tumour immunity. Accordingly, the presence of TILs contains prognostic and predictive value. In 2011, we performed a systematic review and meta-analysis on the prognostic value of TILs across cancer types. Since then, the advent of immune checkpoint blockade (ICB) has renewed interest in the analysis of TILs. In this review, we first describe how our understanding of the prognostic value of TIL has changed over the last decade. New insights on novel TIL subsets are discussed and give a broader view on the prognostic effect of TILs in cancer. Apart from prognostic value, evidence on the predictive significance of TILs in the immune therapy era are discussed, as well as new techniques, such as machine learning that strive to incorporate these predictive capacities within clinical trials.

Citations

• ImageNet classification with deep convolutional neural networks

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