Brain tumors comprise a diverse repertoire of malignancies that arise either from within the brain or from cancer cells that have spread from different primary sites. The most common types of cancer representing these two classes included glioblastoma and brain metastasis (BrM), with BrM most often occurring from melanoma, lung or breast tumors. Single-cell technologies have encouraged the characterization of the tumor microenvironment at unprecedented depth and have indicated vast cellular diversity among tumor cells and their niche.
Anti-tumor immunity depends on cell-cell relationships within the tumor microenvironment, yet many single-cell studies lack spatial context and depend on dissociated tissues. Single-cell analysis of more than 1.1 million cells across 389 high-dimensional histopathology images enabled the spatial resolution of immune lineages and activation states, indicating differences in immune landscapes between primary tumors and brain metastases from diverse solid cancers. This investigation indicated cellular neighborhoods associated with survival in patients with glioblastoma.
