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Olivier Elemento: A Deep Dive into the Tumor Microenvironment

Olivier Elemento/LinkedIn

Jul 6, 2025, 20:49

Olivier Elemento: A Deep Dive into the Tumor Microenvironment

Olivier Elemento, Director of Englander Institute for Precision Medicine, shared a post on LinkedIn:

A Deep Dive into the Tumor Microenvironment

Our new paper, led by the talented Bhavneet Bhinder in my group and co-led with Paul Spellman presents the most comprehensive analysis of the tumor microenvironment (TME) to date. This was a massive team effort, part of the NCI’s Genome Data Analysis Network (GDAN) with contributions from many collaborators. We integrated nine different deconvolution tools to analyze the immune and stromal cells in over 10,000 tumors from 33 cancer types.

This work is a significant step forward because it moves beyond looking at a limited number of cell types. By assessing 79 different TME cell types, we’ve created a much more detailed picture of the complex cellular landscape of cancer.

Some of our key findings include:

Identifying 41 distinct patterns of immune and stromal profiles, confirming that each cancer has a heterogeneous yet unique TME portrait.
Finding that a higher abundance of leukocytes is generally associated with better survival across many cancer types.
Uncovering 35 potential new therapeutic targets and biomarker hypotheses by correlating our detailed TME analysis with cancer mutations, such as in the CASP8 and RAS pathways.

What’s particularly exciting is how this detailed view can help generate new hypotheses for why some patients may respond better to immunotherapy. While each cancer’s TME is unique, we can identify common, underlying patterns across them. For example, we found a shared immune-rich TME cluster that predicts better survival in certain subtypes of bladder cancer and melanoma. This kind of detailed analysis provides a rich resource for driving the next generation of precision medicine strategies.”

Title: Pan-cancer immune and stromal deconvolution predicts clinical outcomes and mutation profiles

Authors: Bhavneet Bhinder, Verena Friedl, Sunantha Sethuraman, Davide Risso, Kami E. Chiotti, R. Jay Mashl, Kyle P. Ellrott, Jordan A. Lee, Christopher K. Wong, Kofi Gyan, Aditya Deshpande, Marcin Imielinski, Rohan Bareja, Josh Stuart, Myron Peto, Katherine A. Hoadley, Alexander J. Lazar, Andrew D. Cherniack, Jingchun Zhu, Shaolong Cao, Mark Rubin, Wenyi Wang, Oliver F. Bathe, Nicolas Robine, The Cancer Genome Atlas Analysis Network, Olivier Elemento

Read the Full Article.

Olivier Elemento

Aditya Deshpande Alexander J Lazar Andrew D. Cherniack Bhavneet Bhinder cancer Christopher K. Wong Davide Risso Jingchun Zhu Jordan A. Lee Josh Stuart Kami E. Chiotti Katherine A Hoadley Kofi Gyan Kyle P. Ellrott Marcin Imielinski Mark Rubin Myron Peto Nicolas Robine Oliver F. Bathe Olivier Elemento OncoDaily Oncology R. Jay Mashl Rohan Bareja Shaolong Cao Sunantha Sethuraman The Cancer Genome Atlas Analysis Network Verena Friedl Wenyi Wang

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