Focal hotspot and diffuse immune subtypes of tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes: AI-powered spatial clustering classification and its clinical relevance to HER2 expression in triple-negative breast cancer
Ting Xie, Shuying Ai, Chen Liu, Bin Luo, Honglin Yan, Hongfeng Zhang, Shuaijun Chen, Zhongtao Chen, Tian Jin, Jingping Yuan · 2025
Read Focal hotspot and diffuse immune subtypes of tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes: AI-powered spatial clustering classification and its clinical relevance to HER2 expression in triple-negative breast cancer by Ting Xie, Shuying Ai, Chen Liu, Bin Luo, Honglin Yan, Hongfeng Zhang, Shuaijun Chen, Zhongtao Chen, Tian Jin, Jingping Yuan (2025) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/pmc-12836918.txt.
Description
Ting Xie and co-authors present a 2025 study sorting breast tumors by the geography of their immune cells. Tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes matter in triple-negative breast cancer, but where they cluster may matter as much as how many exist. The team trains an AI cell classifier on pathology images. It spots the immune cells and records their coordinates. Unsupervised clustering then splits tumors into focal hotspot and diffuse patterns. Patients come from several centers and all received chemotherapy before surgery.
The patterns are tested against HER2 expression levels, split into zero, ultralow, and low bands. Response to the pre-surgery therapy and survival are also compared by pattern. Pathologists get a spatial biomarker where cell counts alone blur the story. HER2-low is a newly treatment-relevant band, so any trait that tracks it draws interest. AI coordinate mapping makes spatial sorting cheap enough for routine slides.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Ting Xie, Shuying Ai, Chen Liu, Bin Luo, Honglin Yan, Hongfeng Zhang, Shuaijun Chen, Zhongtao Chen, Tian Jin, Jingping Yuan |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2025 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 48 KB |
| VERSION | 1.0 |
| LICENSE | CC BY 4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |