posted on 2025-10-08, 10:11authored byRobert Bentham, Thomas P Jones, James RM Black, Carlos Martinez-Ruiz, Michelle Dietzen, Maria Litovchenko, Kerstin Thol, Thomas BK Watkins, Chris Bailey, Oriol Pich, Zhihui Zhang, Peter Van Loo, Mariam Jamal-Hanjani, Carlos Martínez-Ruiz, Takahiro Karasaki, Abigail Bunkum, Sonya Hessey, Wing Kin Liu, Nicolai J Birkbak, Alexander M Frankell, Ariana Huebner, Clare Puttick, Crispin T Hiley, David A Moore, Dhruva Biswas, Emilia L Lim, Kristiana Grigoriadis, Maise Al Bakir, Olivia Lucas, Roberto Vendramin, Sophia Ward, Sian Harries, Simone Zaccaria, Rija Zaidi, Lucrezia Patruno, Despoina Karagianni, Sergio A Quezada, Supreet Kaur Bola, Martin D Forster, Siow Ming Lee, Corentin Richard, Cristina Naceur-Lombardelli, Francisco Gimeno-Valiente, Krupa Thakkar, Monica Sivakumar, Nnennaya Kanu, Ieva Usaite, Sadegh Saghafinia, Selvaraju Veeriah, Sharon Vanloo, Antonia Toncheva, Paulina Prymas, Bushra Mussa, Michalina Magala, Elizabeth Keene, Michelle M Leung, Gareth A Wilson, Rachel Rosenthal, Andrew Rowan, Claudia Lee, Emma Colliver, Katey SS Enfield, Mihaela Angelova, Cian Murphy, Maria Zagorulya, Teresa Marafioti, Elaine Borg, Mary Falzon, Reena Khiroya, Yien Ning Sophia Wong, Emilie Martinoni Hoogenboom, Fleur Monk, James W Holding, Junaid Choudhary, Kunal Bhakhri, Pat Gorman, Robert CM Stephens, Maria Chiara Pisciella, Steve Bandula, Jerome Nicod, Angela Dwornik, Angeliki Karamani, Benny Chain, David R Pearce, Georgia Stavrou, Gerasimos-Theodoros Mastrokalos, Helen L Lowe, James L Reading, John A Hartley, Kayalvizhi Selvaraju, Leah Ensell, Mansi Shah, Piotr Pawlik, Samuel Gamble, Seng Kuong Anakin Ung, Victoria Spanswick, Yin Wu, Jason F Lester, Sean Dulloo, Dean A Fennell, Amrita Bajaj, Apostolos Nakas, Azmina Sodha-Ramdeen, Mohamad Tufail, Molly Scotland, Rebecca Boyles, Sridhar Rathinam, Claire Wilson, Gurdeep Matharu, Jacqueline ShawJacqueline Shaw, Ekaterini Boleti, Heather Cheyne, Mohammed Khalil, Shirley Richardson, Tracey Cruickshank, Gillian Price, Keith M Kerr, Sarah Benafif, Dionysis Papadatos-Pastos, James Wilson, Tanya Ahmad, Jack French, Kayleigh Gilbert, Babu Naidu, Akshay J Patel, Gary Middleton, Aya Osman, Mandeesh Sangha, Gerald Langman, Helen Shackleford, Madava Djearaman, Angela Leek, Jack Davies Hodgkinson, Nicola Totton, Philip Crosbie, Eustace Fontaine, Felice Granato, Juliette Novasio, Kendadai Rammohan, Leena Joseph, Paul Bishop, Vijay Joshi, Sara Waplington, Adam Atkin, Katherine D Brown, Mathew Carter, Anshuman Chaturvedi, Pedro Oliveira, Colin R Lindsay, Fiona H Blackhall, Yvonne Summers, Matthew G Krebs, Antonio Paiva-Correia, Jonathan Tugwood, Caroline Dive, Hugo JWL Aerts, Roland F Schwarz, Tom L Kaufmann, Zoltan Szallasi, Miklos Diossy, Roberto Salgado, Jonas Demeulemeester, Carla Castignani, Stephan Beck, George Kassiotis, Imran Noorani, Clare E Weeden, Eva Grönroos, Jacki Goldman, Mickael Escudero, Philip Hobson, Stefan Boeing, Tamara Denner, Vittorio Barbè, Wei-Ting Lu, William Hill, Yutaka Naito, Erik Sahai, Zoe Ramsden, Emma Nye, Richard Kevin Stone, Jayant K Rane, Jeanette Kittel, Kerstin Haase, Kexin Koh, Rachel Scott, Karl S Peggs, Catarina Veiga, Gary Royle, Charles-Antoine Collins-Fekete, Francesco Fraioli, Paul Ashford, Arjun Nair, Alexander James Procter, Asia Ahmed, Magali N Taylor, David Lawrence, Davide Patrini, Neal Navani, Ricky M Thakrar, Sam M Janes, Zoltan Kaplar, Allan Hackshaw, Camilla Pilotti, Rachel Leslie, Anne-Marie Hacker, Sean Smith, Aoife Walker, Anca Grapa, Hanyun Zhang, Khalid AbdulJabbar, Xiaoxi Pan, Yinyin Yuan, David Chuter, Mairead MacKenzie, Serena Chee, Patricia Georg, Aiman Alzetani, Judith Cave, Eric Lim, Andrew G Nicholson, Paulo De Sousa, Simon Jordan, Alexandra Rice, Hilgardt Raubenheimer, Harshil Bhayani, Lyn Ambrose, Anand Devaraj, Hema Chavan, Sofina Begum, Silviu I Buderi, Daniel Kaniu, Mpho Malima, Sarah Booth, Nadia Fernandes, Pratibha Shah, Chiara Proli, Madeleine Hewish, Sarah Danson, Michael J Shackcloth, Lily Robinson, Peter Russell, Kevin G Blyth, Andrew Kidd, Craig Dick, John Le Quesne, Alan Kirk, Mo Asif, Rocco Bilancia, Nikos Kostoulas, Jennifer Whiteley, Mathew Thomas, JC Ambrose, P Arumugam, EL Baple, M Bleda, F Boardman-Pretty, JM Boissiere, CR Boustred, H Brittain, MJ Caulfield, GC Chan, CEH Craig, LC Daugherty, A de Burca, A Devereau, G Elgar, RE Foulger, T Fowler, P Furió-Tarí, JM Hackett, D Halai, A Hamblin, S Henderson, JE Holman, TJP Hubbard, K Ibáñez, R Jackson, LJ Jones, D Kasperaviciute, M Kayikci, L Lahnstein, L Lawson, SEA Leigh, IUS Leong, FJ Lopez, F Maleady-Crowe, J Mason, EM McDonagh, L Moutsianas, M Mueller, N Murugaesu, AC Need, CA Odhams, C Patch, D Perez-Gil, D Polychronopoulos, J Pullinger, T Rahim, A Rendon, P Riesgo-Ferreiro, T Rogers, M Ryten, K Savage, K Sawant, RH Scott, A Siddiq, A Sieghart, D Smedley, KR Smith, A Sosinsky, W Spooner, HE Stevens, A Stuckey, R Sultana, ERA Thomas, SR Thompson, C Tregidgo, A Tucci, E Walsh, SA Watters, MJ Welland, E Williams, K Witkowska, SM Wood, M Zarowiecki, Charles Swanton, Nicholas McGranahan
<p dir="ltr">Recognition and elimination of pathogens and cancer cells depend on the adaptive immune system. Thus, accurate quantification of immune subsets is vital for precision medicine. We present immune lymphocyte estimation from nucleotide sequencing (ImmuneLENS), which estimates T cell and B cell fractions, class switching and clonotype diversity from whole-genome sequencing data at depths as low as 5× coverage. By applying ImmuneLENS to the 100,000 Genomes Project, we identify genes enriched with somatic mutations in T cell-rich tumors, significant sex-based differences in circulating T cell fraction and demonstrated that the circulating T cell fraction in patients with cancer is significantly lower than in healthy individuals. Low circulating B cell fraction was linked to increased cancer incidence. Finally, circulating T cell abundance was more prognostic of 5-year cancer survival than infiltrating T cells.</p>
Funding
TRACERx is funded by Cancer Research UK (C11496/A17786) and coordinated through the Cancer Research UK and UCL Cancer Trials Centre, which has a core grant from Cancer Research UK (CRUK) (C444/A15953)
The RNA-seq and WES data (in each case from the TRACERx study) used during this study are a subset of the TRACERx421 dataset and have been deposited at the European Genome–Phenome Archive, which is hosted by The European Bioinformatics Institute and the Centre for Genomic Regulation under the accession codes EGAS00001006517 (RNA-seq) and EGAS00001006494 (WES). Access is controlled by the TRACERx data access committee to ensure patient privacy and data confidentiality are protected while fostering impactful scientific discoveries. Details on how to apply for access are available on the linked pages. The data access committee aims to respond to requests within 1 week. For TCR-seq data used in this analysis, the FASTQ data are deposited at the SRA under accession code BioProject (PRJNA544699). Coverage files for the TCRA, TCRB, TCRG and IGH loci were generated from WGS TRACERx 100 samples. These coverage files used for the calculation of the T cell and B cell fractions are available at Zenodo (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7785803)54 and were the only data derived from the TRACERx WGS analysis used within this paper.
WGS and phenotypic data from the 100KGP can be accessed by application to Genomics England following the procedure outlined at https://www.genomicsengland.co.uk/join-us for both academic and industry users. Genomics England restricts access to 100KGP data to bona fide researchers to protect the sensitive genomic data of its participants. For academic users, Genomics England aims to review all applications within ten working days, and access will be granted within two working days after confirmation of affiliation from the researcher’s institution and completion of online governance training.
The 1000 Genome Data used are publicly available and can be accessed at https://www.internationalgenome.org/data. Calculated ImmuneLENS output including class-switching and polyclonal predictions for each LCL cell line included are available on Zenodo (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.11093976)55.
PCAWG data used in this study were obtained through our collaboration with MD Anderson. To gain access to the raw WGS samples of the TCGA portion of the PCAWG data used in this study, researchers need to apply to the TCGA data access committee via a database of Genotypes and Phenotypes (dbGaP; https://dbgap.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/aa/wga.cgi?page=login). Access is controlled due to respect and protection of the interests of research participants. The calculated ImmuneLENS output for these samples is available on Zenodo (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.11093961)56.
TCGA pilot project was established by the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and the National Human Genome Research Institute. The data were retrieved through the dbGaP authorization (accession phs000178.v9.p8). Information about TCGA and the constituent investigators and institutions of the TCGA research network can be found at http://cancergenome.nih.gov/. To access TCGA WES and low-pass WGS data, researchers will need to apply to the TCGA Data Access Committee (DAC) via dbGaP (https://dbgap.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/aa/wga.cgi?page=login). Access is controlled due to respect and protection of the interests of research participants. The calculated T cell ExTRECT TCRA T cell fraction scores along with the ImmuneLENS output for the low-pass WGS samples used in this study are available at Zenodo (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7794867)57.
Single-cell data used in this analysis are previously described51 and available at https://cellxgene.cziscience.com/collections/edb893ee-4066-4128-9aec-5eb2b03f8287.