High-Dimensional Spectral Cytometry Reveals Therapeutically Relevant Immune Subtypes in Gastric Cancer

Identification of locally advanced gastric cancer (GC) patients who might potentially benefit from immune-based strategies is limited by both the poor predictive quality of existing biomarkers, including molecular subtypes, tumor mutational burden, and PD-L1 expression, as well as inadequate understanding of the gastric cancer immune microenvironment. Here, we leveraged high-dimensional spectral cytometry to re-classify locally advanced gastric tumors based on immune composition. The gastric cancer microenvironment was comprised of a diverse immune infiltrate including high proportions of plasmablasts, macrophages, and myeloid-derived suppressor cells. Computational cell typing and sample clustering based on tiered broad immune and T-cell focused phenotyping identified three distinct immune subtypes. The most immunogenic subtype exhibited high proportions of activated CD4+ T-cells and plasmablasts and included tumors that would have been classified as non-immunogenic based on prior classifications. Analysis of gastric cancer patients treated with immune checkpoint blockade indicates that patients who responded to immunotherapy had a pre-treatment tumor composition that corresponded to higher immune scores from our analysis. This work establishes a novel immunological classification of gastric cancer including identification of patients and immune networks likely to benefit from immune-based therapies.