Analysis of Tumour-Infiltrating T-Cell Transcriptomes Reveals a Unique Genetic Signature Across Different Types of Cancer

CD8+ and CD4+ T-cells play a key role in cellular responses against cancer by cytotoxicity induction and effector lineages differentiation, respectively. These subsets have been found in different types of cancer; however, it is unclear whether tumour-infiltrating T-cell subsets exhibit similar transcriptome profiling across different types of cancer in comparison with healthy tissue-resident T-cells. The aim of this study was to identify specific pathways associated with tumour-infiltrating CD4-T, CD8-T and Tregs obtained from different cancers. An in-silico analysis of single-cell and bulk RNA-sequencing data obtained from public databases including breast cancer, melanoma, colorectal cancer, lung cancer and head and neck cancer was performed. Our data revealed that tumour-infiltrating T-cells from different types of cancers exhibit common genetic signatures associated to metabolic pathways and unique pathways associated to cell differentiation in effector and regulatory CD4+ and nucleoside metabolism in CD8+ cells.