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Ординатура / Хирургия / Библиотека им академика М.И. Перельмана / Книга_5866_Библиотеки_им_академика_М_И_Перельмана

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3. Mapping proteins and transcripts in the TIME
3.1 Chromogenic and fluorescent immunodetection in FFPE
As with any chemical stain, H&E is poorly suited to the analysis of molecular features of the TIME such as immune cell cluster of differentiation (CD) markers or cytokines. Chromogenic IHC [54] on FFPE sections provides a robust method to leverage antibody specificity to localize an enzyme to sites where a target antigen is most abundant in a tissue section. There, the enzyme generates an insoluble precipitate upon reaction with a chro­mogenic substrate. In indirect IHC, the primary antibody is chemically conjugated to horseradish peroxidase (HRP) or alkaline phosphatase (AP). However, it is far more common to perform indirect detection using a secondary antibody-enzyme conjugate (Fig. 3 , left). For example, a polyclonal antibody raised in a goat to recognize the constant region (Fc) of rabbit immunoglobulin (a typical species for monoclonal or polyclonal primary antibodies) is chemically crosslinked to HRP or AP to be used as a secondary antibody for chromogenic IHC. Deparaffinized and rehydrated tissue sections are treated with heat and moisture to depolymerize formaldehyde and reverse crosslinks in a process
299Spatial mapping of the tumor immune microenvironment
Fig. 3 Overview of chromogenic vs fluorescent IHC staining. (Left) Chromogenic IHC uses an enzymatic reaction to deposit a colored compound near the target antigen. Visualization is typically accom­plished using bright-field microscopy. (Right) Fluorescent detection uses a fluorophore to provide a signal for visualization by fluorescence microscopy.
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dubbed "antigen retrieval" [55]. Then, the tissue is treated to prevent nonspecific anti­body binding, and the primary antibody is applied to detect the biomarker. After wash­ing, the secondary antibody conjugate is applied, and the unbound conjugate is washed away. Then, incubation with the chromogenic substrate deposits precipitate to reveal the distribution of the antigen. The standard chromogen, DAB (3,3
0
-diaminobenzidine), yields a dark brown precipitate when incubated with HRP and hydrogen peroxide. The brown color contrasts with the blue of hematoxylin which is typically used (with or without eosin) as a chemical counterstain to provide morphological context, making bright-field microscopy sufficient to visualize the distribution of chromogen precipitate.
Despite well-understood limitations [56], chromogenic IHC is a critical tool in the clinical laboratory and remains the most important assay for examining the TIME in patient samples. For example, a chromogenic IHC test to assay expression levels of PD-L1 within a tumor is approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration as a companion assay for ICI therapy using PD-1 or PD-L1 therapeutic antibodies [7]. However, patients whose tumors test positive for PD-L1 may not be significantly more likely to respond to treatment [57]. In turn, beyond the level of staining, the distribution and abundance of PD-L1 are not reliable indicators of therapeutic response.
Another challenge for chromogenic IHC is that antigens that are expressed at low levels and/or damaged by suboptimal tissue processing may produce a weak or false neg­ative signal. This may obviate detection by standard secondary antibody-enzyme conju­gates but be compatible with detection using a polymerized secondary antibody-enzyme construct, which has the potential to increase sensitivity several fold by facilitating signal amplification [58]. This and several other methods have been used to increase the ratio of HRP enzymes to the antigen [59]. Multiple signal amplification strategies are commer­cialized. For example, a biotinylated primary or secondary antibody may be detected with greater sensitivity using a streptavidin-HRP conjugate than via direct crosslinking. Alter­natively, in the ABC method, the biotinylated antibody is detected by polymers formed in situ from avidin and biotinylated HRP. Linking polymers of HRP to secondary anti­bodies is a common approach for signal amplification, with multiple options and formats commercially available.
Immunofluorescence (IF), or immunodetection with fluorescent antibodies, was demonstrated by Albert Coons decades prior to the development of chromogenic IHC [60, 61], yet has remained a niche technique for clinical pathology. Conjugating primary or secondary antibodies to small-molecule fluorophores allows sensitive and high-resolution detection of antibody binding using any modern fluorescence micro­scope (Fig. 3, right). Fluorescence brightness is proportional to the local concentration of fluorophores, and optical filters allow independent excitation and detection of multiple fluorophores bound to a single sample. Thus, IF is better suited to quantitative measure­ment and detecting colocalized antigens on a tissue section than chromogenic IHC. However, clinical use of IF is limited by the availability of appropriate microscopes,
the lack of practical fluorescent counterstains to help appreciate morphology, and a high autofluorescent background observed in many tissues.
3.2 Multiplex immunodetection in FFPE
Understanding the full complexity o f the TIME requires the ability to map many biomarkers in the same tissue sample simultaneously. Often, it is satisfactory to perform multiple IHC experiments in parallel, for example, to independently evaluate PD-L1 staining and enumerate total CD8 same tissue block. However, this approach is not compatible with the evaluation of multiple antigens in single cells, such as determining whether CD8 pressing perforin or PD-1, which would provide information on cytotoxic T cell acti­vation or exhaustion, respectively. Therefore multiplexing, or detection of multiple biomarkers together on one tissue sample, is now accept ed as a critical tool for analysis of the TIME [62].
While most IHC is performed using a single primary antibody, there are well­established methods to apply IHC to map two, three, four, or more antigens at once in a single tissue section [63–66]. Multiplex staining in chromogenic IHC requires the use of chromogens that yield different precipitate colors, potentially allowing a series of visually distinct chromogens to be reacted in sequence with enzyme-conjugated sec­ondary antibodies. However, limitations of the chemistry such as masking of antigens by precipitates can confound reliable colocalization, even in double staining IHC. As alter­native enzyme substrates to chromogens, tyramides form phenoxyl radicals that cova­lently modify nearby protein tyrosines. Performing cycles of indirect detection and enzyme inactivation with a different fluorescent tyramide for each primary antibody, up to seven or eight antigens can be mapped on a single tissue section [67]. This so-called tyramide signal amplification (TSA) method has long been commercialized, with substrates and kits now offered by several companies compatible with standard autostainers. TSA may also have applications for multiplexed chromogenic IHC [68]. The Opal fluorescent TSA chemistry and multispectral imaging technology, developed by Cambridge Research & Instrumentation and most recently acquired by Akoya, offers a well-validated tool to examine patterns of up to seven TIME biomarkers on one section
[69–71]. TSA has been used productively over the past decade to explore determinants of
immunotherapy response, leading to dozens of publications (e.g., [71–73]).
For multiplexed IF, chemical fluorophores covering the spectrum from ultraviolet excitation to far-red emission are commercially available as N-hydroxysuccinimide esters that are readily conjugated to antibodies, offering the potential to distinguish dozens of individual fluorophores or combinations at one time using spectral detection [74, 75]. Thus, using direct conjugation of fluorophores with distinct excitation and emission spectra provides a simple and practical means to apply four or more fluorescently labeled
+
cytotoxic T cells on proximate sections from the
+
cells are also ex-
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primary antibodies simultaneously and then map them independently. Multiplexed detection of directly labeled antibodies is standard in flow cytometry, but direct IF in thin sections is limited to abundantly expressed biomarkers with well-defined subcellular dis­tributions. An interesting application of direct fluorescence localization is in the detection of specific T cell receptors in tissue [76]. Here, in place of an antibody, a multivalent probe is used to overcome the low affinity of binding of TCRs to peptide-MHC com­plexes. The capability to track multiple tumor-specific TCRs in situ is an important miss­ing tool for TIME analysis.
Toward enhancing the sensitivity of detection in IF, many alternatives to covalent antibody labeling with chemical fluorophores have been described. Bright fluorescent nanoparticles such as quantum dots have long been used for multiplexing IF with mod­erate success [77]. Fluorescent polymers [78] are similarly bright but more chemically tractable for conjugation.
Given the limitations of direct labeling, it is more common to exploit indirect detec­tion with fluorescent secondary antibodies in multiplexed IF. Here, using primary anti­bodies that are different subclasses (mouse IgG1, IgG2b, or IgG3) or isoforms (IgG vs. IgM) and/or derived from a different species (mouse vs. rabbit) allows multiple bio­markers to be detected independently by different fluorescent Fc-specific secondary anti­bodies. However, with most validated high-quality antibodies having been derived in mice or rabbits, the requirement to identify different species is a barrier that has long sty­mied progress in multiplexing with indirect IF. The growing popularity of rabbit mono­clonal antibodies, which are all one IgG subclass, is only exacerbating this problem. Modifying antibodies with biotin for detection with fluorescent streptavidin or with digoxigenin or other haptens [79] for detection with antihapten antibodies can extend multiplexing. Preassembly of antibodies from the same species with different fluorescent streptavidins or with fluorescent secondaries (e.g., Thermo Zenon, ChromoTek Nano­Secondaries, NanoTag Fluo-Tag) is another way to overcome this limitation.
3.2.1 Deep profiling by cyclic IHC and IF
As a means to achieve very high multiplexing, multiple antibodies, whether from differ­ent or the same species, can be examined in sequence by performing cycles of direct or indirect staining and stripping/erasing on one tissue section. Multiple strategies have been used to remove the signal of the prior cycle while preserving the remaining antigens for subsequent detection. Though slow and cumbersome when performed manually, cyclic staining is readily implemented as an automated iterative staining system for dozens of markers (Fig. 4).
Applied to IHC, multiple markers can be detected by sequential chromogenic reactions and "erasing" the precipitate along with eluting bound antibody. While DAB leads to a
Fig. 4 Overview of cyclic immunostaining using directly-labeled fluorescent antibodies. Following tis­sue preparation, staining is performed in multiple rounds. Each iteration includes staining with a new set of fluorescent antibodies, followed by an inactivation step. Cycles are repeated until all biomarkers have been imaged.
303Spatial mapping of the tumor immune microenvironment
relatively stable precipitate, the red HRP chromogen AEC (3-amino-9-ethylcarbazole) can be removed with ethanol. This is leveraged in the sequential immunoperoxidase label­ing and erasing (SIMPLE) strategy [80] to build up a composite image of multiple antigens via cycles of primary antibodystaining, indirect detection with HRP-conjugated secondary antibodies, imaging, and erasing. Several approaches to cyclic IF on FFPE tissue sections that can be enabled in the laboratory have been described that chemically inactivate or bleach the fluorophore or elute the primary and secondary antibodies [81–85].Among these, the most practical option for "home brew" may be tissue-based cyclic immunoflu­orescence (t-CyCIF) [83, 86] where the signal is erased by bleaching fluorophores with hydrogen peroxide solution at high pH in white light, limiting antigen loss in each cycle. A simple erasing methodology developed by GE Healthcare, now Cytiva, is based on the chemical inactivation of cyanine dyes to enable cyclic IF on tissue sections [87]. An auto­mated staining and imaging device is currently marketed as the Cell DIVE system for sixty marker analysis. In the toponome imaging system (TIS) [88], in each cycle, a pair of fluo­rescent primary antibodies are incubated with a tissue section, imaged, and then photo­bleached. This simple strategy has been adapted to enable 96 biomarkers to be interrogated on the same tissue sample via the Miltenyi MACSima system, facilitating deep profiling of the TIME.
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3.2.2 Barcode-based multiplexing methods
The practical value of being able to probe with multiple mouse or rabbit monoclonal antibodies at one time and the limitations of direct labeling have led to multiple antibody barcoding strategies. Stimulated by immuno-PCR [89], a large class of promising tech­nologies for multiplexed immunodetection have been reported in the academic and pat­ent literature in the last two decades that leverage antibody-oligonucleotide conjugates to localize multiple fluorophores to the antibody-antigen complex. Here, multiplexing can be readily achieved via barcoding each antibody with a different oligonucleotide and then color-coding the detection chemistry. Nearly the full range of nucleic acid detection and amplification technologies have been applied to fluorescent immunolocalization includ­ing annealing complementary probes, strand displacement, gel, and nanostructure assem­bly, hybridization chain reaction, isothermal amplification, rolling circle amplification (RCA), ligation, primer extension, and in situ sequencing by synthesis (partly reviewed here [90]). Detecting pairs of antibody-oligonucleotide conjugates by in situ proximity ligation assay [91] can enhance both sensitivity and specificity. While most of these methods have yet to be applied to the analysis of the TIME in FFPE tissue sections, Ultivue has fully commercialized a DNA-barcoding, amplification, and detection tech­nology, InSituPlex [92] (Fig. 5, top), where each of four primary antibodies is conjugated to a unique oligonucleotide, the antibody barcode amplified by primer-exchange reac­tion [93], and then detected by annealing of probes labeled with one of four fluorescent dyes. This four-plex IF assay has been implemented on autostainers and recently applied
Fig. 5 Overview of new commercial multiplexing methods. InSituPlex uses primary antibodies conju­gated to DNA barcodes, which are amplified before fluorescence-labeled probes are hybridized to the DNA. Amplified DNA is shown. UltraPlex uses peptide tag-conjugated primary antibodies and anti­peptide tag fluorophore-conjugated secondary antibodies.
to explore determinants of ICI response [94, 95]. For higher multiplexing, a cocktail of multiple primary antibodies is applied and all their barcodes are amplified. Deeper pro­filing is achieved by cycles of annealing four detection probes, imaging, and elution. This enables interrogation of the TIME with a large panel of antibodies. Along the same lines, using the Akoya Biosciences CODEX (codetection by indexing) instrument, panels of antibody-oligonucleotide conjugates are detected in parallel via cycles of annealing and eluting of fluorescently labeled oligonucleotide probes, providing comparatively rapid deep profiling by cyclic IF.
As an alternative to DNA barcoding, in the Cell IDx UltraPlex strategy, primary anti­bodies are conjugated with individual peptide tags (Fig. 5, bottom). Here, much like using secondary antibodies to recognize the species of primary antibodies by their distinct Fc domains, each primary antibody can be detected by a different monoclonal antibody raised to recognize one of the peptide tags. As with DNA barcoded antibodies, the peptide­tagged primary antibodies can be applied as a cocktail. Then the antitag "secondary" anti­bodies are applied, which are provided as fluorescent or enzyme conjugates, enabling mul­tiplexing of several antibodies of the same species in IHC or IF. UltraPlex is rapid, readily adaptedto autostainers, and, using panels of four primary antibodies, validated for analysis of patterns in the TIME potentially linked to immunotherapy response [96, 97].Afterimag­ing, sections can be stained with H&E to align fluorescence to morphology. To increase multiplexing, additional panels of antibodies can be examined on adjacent thin sections. Cyclic staining for deep profiling with this technology appears straightforward.
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3.3 In situ hybridization to detect transcripts
As a complementary approach to protein biomarker analysis by IHC or IF, detection of RNA transcripts by in situ hybridization (ISH) enables detection of the expression pat­terns of RNA biomarkers in the TIME with labeled oligonucleotide probes. Of partic­ular relevance, patterns of expression of small secreted proteins such as TNFα, TGFβ, and IFNγ are important indicators of immune cell differentiation, activation, and suppression. While determining which cells in the TIME are releasing secreted proteins is poorly mat­ched to IHC or IF, ISH to detect messenger RNA (mRNA) in the cytoplasm is ideal for this purpose. Synthesis of biotinylated or digoxigenin-labeled probes, detection with streptavidin conjugated to HRP, or indirect detection with antidigoxigenin antibody, and chromogenic detection with DAB provides a direct equivalent to IHC. Fluorescent streptavidin or antidigoxigenin enables fluorescent ISH (FISH) as an equivalent to indi­rect immunofluorescence. Beyond simple annealing, a wide range of nucleic acid-based amplification methods have been applied to ISH. Among these, in situ branched DNA signal amplification (bDNA) [98] has been successfully commercialized as ACD RNAscope and Thermo Fisher ViewRNA using detection via proximity of pairs of bound hybridization probes to achieve single-molecule specificity and sensitivity.
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This bDNA method enables both chromogenic and fluorescent single-molecule mRNA detection in FFPE tissue sections with automated stainers. Further, bDNA detection is readily combined with IF to allow simultaneous interrogation of proteins and transcripts in FFPE tissue sections [99]. While synthesizing a single probe labeled with one or a few fluorophores may not be sufficiently sensitive, assembling a panel of fluorescent probes to tile across a transcript can concentrate enough in one spot to allow detection and cou­nting of single mRNAs, enabling single-molecule FISH (smFISH) [100]. Given the pointillist labeling, this approach is ideally suited to multiplexing. The smFISH approach has been commercialized as Stellaris by BioSearch who offers off-the-shelf sets of gene­specific probes in multiple fluorescent colors. smFISH is compatible with cryosections
[101] but displays unsatisfactory signal-to-noise in FFPE sections. This has been partly
addressed by method optimization [102] and rolling circle amplification [103]. Among alternative probe designs that have been proposed for smFISH, split-FISH appears to offer significant advantages for speed, sensitivity and specificity [104].
As with deep profiling by IF, sequential staining strategies have been implemented in FISH to maximize multiplexing. In sequential barcoding FISH (seqFISH), probes that detect each mRNA target are synthesized with four fluorophores. In each cycle, mixtures of probes are applied in which each probe is only represented by one color and the chang­ing fluorescence at each position reflects which probe is binding [105] (Fig. 6). Similar to
Fig. 6 SeqFISH barcoding. SeqFISH restains each biomarker multiple times using the same oligonu­cleotide probe, switching the fluorophore each cycle. The sequence of the fluorophore is used as a barcode to identify the biomarker, allowing the same set of two to four dyes to be used to label thou­sands of RNA molecules in the same tissue section.
seqFISH, multiplexed error-robust FISH (MERFISH) [106] uses sequential imaging to encode a unique fluorescent identifier for each mRNA. First, a series of encoding probes are applied to the sample, each containing a targeting sequence in the center and two readout sequences on either side. Following the initial hybridization, the first set of fluo­rescently labeled readout probes are conjugated to the readout sequences and imaged. This process is repeated with each set of readout probes. Not all RNA molecules will have a corresponding readout probe in every round of hybridization, thus, the presence or absence of a signal can be used to generate a binary barcode for each unique transcript. Although these iterative ISH methods may not be compatible with FFPE tissue sections, they can be successfully implemented in properly cleared cryosections [107].
3.4 High multiplexing with Digital Spatial Profiling
NanoString nCounter is a distinct oligonucleotide barcoding technology that leverages a dedicated flow-cell reader to distinguish the 4096 possible codes on Reporter Tags formed by ordering four fluorescent colors along six positions along a nucleic acid backbone. In Digital Spatial Profiling (DSP) [108,109], sets of Reporter Tags are linked to ISH probes or conjugated to antibodies via a UV cleavable linker. The probes are applied in a cocktail to an FFPE tissue section or cryosection along with up to four fluorescently labeled antibodies to help identify morphology or immune subsets. Then, using conventional IF as a guide, one or more regions of interest (ROIs) are selected. The ROI can be a segment of the tumor or multiple spots to capture cells with specific markers. Then, each ROI is illumi­nated by UV light and the released Reporter Tags are eluted and captured for detection in the nCounter reader. The DSP platform is particularly powerful for mRNA profiling on slides but has also enabled relatively deep profiling of immune subsets and immune response to immunotherapy based on detecting CD markers and other antigens in the TIME
[110–112], albeit without the single-cell resolution of other strategies. This is less of a lim-
itationwhen interrogating the immune cell make-up of tertiary lymphoid structures, where dense clusters of innate and adaptive immune cells form in or near tumors and serve a role in potentiating immune response [113,114].
Despite its potential, the current DSP platform has several weak points. The reliance on four-plex immunofluorescence to identify ROIs and the small yield of Reporter Tags from each cell makes many kinds of measurements impractical. While collecting Reporter Tags from multiple cells in a single section based on shared cell subtype markers offers a practical alternative, this will obscure spatial and cell-to-cell heterogeneity. Although a larger region of tissue can be mapped by examining a grid of ROI’s, each spot is simply a sample of the local cells. Further, although DSP has the potential to inter­rogate hundreds to thousands of antigens at once, the current strategy is to offer panels of tagged antibody probes that do not provide the profiling depth or customization of the iterative staining methods.
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As a way to increase multiplexing with the DSP strategy, NanoString Reporter Tags can also be detected and quantified using massively parallel sequencing, which has been applied to increase the range of detection of RNAs [109]. This approach can also be applied to codetection of proteins with oligonucleotide-tagged antibodies as is already practical in multiomic single-cell analysis (CITE-seq) [115–117], potentially enabling simultaneous interrogation of tens of thousands of antigens and transcripts at a time in each DSP region of interest.
3.5 Multiplexing in FFPE tissue beyond fluorescence
While fluorescence detection has proven more than satisfactory for a wide range of mul­tiplexed assay formats, fluorophores can display low signal-to-background, limited spatial resolution, spectral overlap across optical channels, and problematic quenching and pho­tobleaching. Further, results are subject to the varying performance of scanners and microscopes and lack of standards for image processing software. Among the alternative antibody labeling strategies compatible with multiplexed optical detection at cellular res­olution, molecular or nanoparticle tags that can be detected by vibrational Raman spec­troscopy are particularly promising [118–120]. By leveraging dedicated microscopes and the narrow emission bands that can be achieved with small-molecule labels such as the Carbow probes [121], Raman spectroscopy offers the potential to independently image dozens of antigens at subcellular resolution in thin tissue sections.
In mass spectrometry immunohistochemistry (MSIHC) [122], labeling antibodies with elemental mass tags offers a powerful approach for multiplexing but creates a chal­lenge for scanning mass spectrometry at cellular resolution. This has been addressed by two similar strategies, imaging mass cytometry (IMC, commercialized by Fluidigm) [123] and multiplexed ion beam imaging (MIBI, recently commercialized by IONpath) [124]. Here, primary antibodies conjugated to carriers loaded with one of over a hundred avail­able heavy metals as monoisotopic tags [125] are applied to the tissue as a cocktail, and then the tissue is scanned with a laser (IMC) or ion beam (MIBI) to vaporize the tags for detection in a simple mass spectrometer. The spectra obtained at each scan position allow independent detection of the ion count for each mass tag and thus quantitative mapping of each antibody. Although primarily applied to protein detection, IMC has also been adapted to enable highly multiplexed detection of RNAs using bDNA amplification and mass-tagged probes, a strategy compatible with dual detection along with mass­tagged antibodies on the same tissue section [126].
Given the very high multiplexing and excellent quantitation but the limited spatial resolution of this methodology, a practical way to examine the data is to assign the protein or RNA expression to individual cells in the sample [127]. Toward these ends, metal counterstaining as with ruthenium tetroxide [128] may enhance cell segmentation. Once cells are defined, dissection of the TIME using MSIHC is facilitated by compatibility with