Tumor Infiltrating Lymphocytes (TILs)

Background

Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) has a poor prognosis because it lacks hormonal and immune (HER2) receptors, and hence does not respond to traditional hormonal therapy or targeted anti-HER2 therapies. This highlights the importance of novel prognostic markers for patient subtyping and identifying response to chemotherapy. One of the few available prognostic biomarkers in TNBC are tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs), which are immune cells that fight cancer. TNBC patients with dense lymphocytic infiltrates have significantly better survival outcomes. Yet estimating the density of TILs in microscopic slides is challenging and complex, and there is a considerable degree of variability among pathologists when they do this task visually.

Aim

Develop computational tools for accurate and reproducible estimation of TILs density in TNBC.

Members

Mohamed Amgad
PhD Candidate

Publications

Amgad M, Elfandy H, Hussein H, Atteya LA, Elsebaie MA, Abo Elnasr LS, Sakr RA, Salem HS, Ismail AF, Saad AM, Ahmed J. Structured crowdsourcing enables convolutional segmentation of histology images. Bioinformatics. 2019 Sep 15;35(18):3461-7.

Amgad M, Stovgaard ES, Balslev E, Thagaard J, Chen W, Dudgeon S, Sharma A, Kerner JK, Denkert C, Yuan Y, AbdulJabbar K. Report on computational assessment of tumor infiltrating lymphocytes from the International Immuno-Oncology Biomarker Working group. NPJ breast cancer. 2020 May 12;6(1):1-3.

Kos Z, Roblin E, Kim RS, Michiels S, Gallas BD, Chen W, van de Vijver KK, Goel S, Adams S, Demaria S, Viale G. Pitfalls in assessing stromal tumor infiltrating lymphocytes (sTILs) in breast cancer. NPJ breast cancer. 2020 May 12;6(1):1-6.

Hudeček J, Voorwerk L, van Seijen M, Nederlof I, de Maaker M, van den Berg J, van de Vijver KK, Sikorska K, Adams S, Demaria S, Viale G. Application of a risk-management framework for integration of stromal tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes in clinical trials. NPJ breast cancer. 2020 May 12;6(1):1-8.

Amgad M, Sarkar A, Srinivas C, Redman R, Ratra S, Bechert CJ, Calhoun BC, Mrazeck K, Kurkure U, Cooper LA, Barnes M. Joint region and nucleus segmentation for characterization of tumor infiltrating lymphocytes in breast cancer. InMedical Imaging 2019: Digital Pathology 2019 Mar 18 (Vol. 10956, p. 109560M). International Society for Optics and Photonics.

Funding

Advanced Development of an Open-Source Platform for Web-Based Integrative Digital Image Analysis in Cancer
NCI U24CA194362
$4,501,083