Browsing by Author "Uski, Ilona"

Tumors contain variable number of different immune cells that infiltrate the tumor microenvironment, such as tumor infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs). More research is needed to understand the functional and clinical importance of various TIL subgroups in cancer. Understanding the differences between individual cancer patients will help development of new treatment methods and discovering why only some patients respond to immunological treatments. Renal cell carcinoma (RCC) is the most common kidney cancer type with good overall survival prognosis when the tumor is surgically removed before it has metastasized. However, the prognosis of RCC is significantly decreased when the cancer has spread. The aim of this master’s thesis project was to characterize the tumor infiltrating lymphocyte populations in patient derived RCC samples. Characterization was done with flow cytometry and a custom antibody panel designed to detect various lymphocyte subpopulations. We also wanted to further study the TILs by expanding the lymphocytes from the tumor samples and test their function in an impendence-based assay against matched autologous tumor cells. Based on the flow cytometry results, the different RCC subtypes in the cohort showed some variation in TILs. Still, more research is needed to investigate these differences. We were able to culture the TILs from the RCC tumor samples, and most of them were CD4+ T cells expressing memory markers CD45RO and CCR7. Some expanded TILs expressed markers related to T cell activity and terminal differentiation. In conclusion, this thesis provided material and insights for future RCC TIL experiments as well as considerations for optimization needed in further studies.