Neutrophil diversity is associated with T-cell immunity and clinical relevance in patients with thyroid cancer

Neutrophil heterogeneity is involved in autoimmune diseases, sepsis, and several cancers.

However, the link between neutrophil heterogeneity and T-cell immunity in thyroid cancer is incompletely understood.

We investigated the circulating neutrophil heterogeneity in 3 undifferentiated thyroid cancer (UTC), 14 differentiated thyroid cancer (DTC) (4 Stage IV, 10 Stage I–II), and healthy controls ( n  = 10) by transcriptomic data and cytometry.

Participants with UTC had a significantly higher proportion of immature high-density neutrophils (HDN) and lower proportion of mature HDN in peripheral blood compared to DTC.

The proportion of circulating PD-L1^+ immature neutrophils were significantly increased in advanced cancer patients.

Unsupervised analysis of transcriptomics data from circulating HDN revealed downregulation of innate immune response and T-cell receptor signaling pathway in cancer patients.

Moreover, UTC patients revealed the upregulation of glycolytic process and glutamate receptor signaling pathway.

Comparative analysis across tumor types and stages revealed the downregulation of various T-cell-related pathways, such as T-cell receptor signaling pathway and T-cell proliferation in advanced cancer patients.

Moreover, the proportions of CD8+ and CD4+ T effector memory CD45RA+ (TEMRA) cells from peripheral blood were significantly decreased in UTC patients compared to DTC patients.

Finally, we demonstrated that proportions of tumor-infiltrated neutrophils were increased and related with poor prognosis in advanced thyroid cancer using data from our RNA-seq and TCGA (The Cancer Genome Atlas) data.

In conclusion, observed prevalence of circulating immature high-density neutrophils and their immunosuppressive features in undifferentiated thyroid cancers underscore the importance of understanding neutrophil dynamics in the context of tumor progression in thyroid cancer.