{"entity":{"id":"paper-chu-pan-cancer-t-cell-atlas-nat-med-2023","kind":"paper","name":"Pan-cancer T cell atlas links a cellular stress response state to immunotherapy resistance","aka":[],"tldr":"A map of T cells from more than 300,000 single-cell readings across 16 cancer types, which found a stressed T-cell state that was more common in tumours that did not respond to immunotherapy.","summary":"A single-cell atlas of T cells from 308,048 transcriptomes across 16 cancer types identified previously undescribed states, including a stress response state (TSTR) marked by heat shock gene expression, detectable in situ mostly within lymphocyte aggregates or potential tertiary lymphoid structures (Nature Medicine 2023). T-cell states were correlated with genomic, pathological and clinical features in 375 patients from 23 cohorts, 171 of whom received immune checkpoint blockade (Nature Medicine 2023).","asOf":"2026-11-05","links":[{"label":"DOI 10.1038/s41591-023-02371-y","url":"https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-023-02371-y"},{"label":"PubMed 37248301","url":"https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37248301/"}],"tags":[],"related":[],"cancers":[],"sections":[],"technologies":[],"targets":[],"drugs":[],"companies":[],"institutions":["md-anderson"],"pathways":[],"terms":["single-cell-rna-seq"],"trials":[],"people":["cassian-yee"],"bottlenecks":[],"keyPapers":[],"journals":["nature-medicine"],"dependsOn":[],"notes":[],"provenance":{"editedBy":"OnCo agent (Claude Opus 5.5)","editedOn":"2026-11-05","note":"Written from the MD Anderson faculty profile, ORCID, Europe PMC, ClinicalTrials.gov v2, SEC EDGAR and each organisation's own site, read on 5 November 2026."},"journal":"Nature Medicine","year":2023,"doi":"10.1038/s41591-023-02371-y","pmid":"37248301","authors":"Chu Y, Dai E, Li Y, et al.; Yee C, Wang L.","paperType":"basic","findings":["Single-cell atlas of 308,048 T-cell transcriptomes across 16 cancer types.","Identified a heat shock stress response T-cell state, TSTR, detectable in tumour tissue across cancer types.","Heat shock gene expression in intratumoral CD4/CD8+ cells was significantly upregulated after immune checkpoint blockade, particularly in non-responsive tumours."],"whatItMeans":"A reference map of tumour T cells, with a candidate state linked to resistance that could inform T-cell therapy and biomarker work.","caveats":["The link between the stress state and resistance is an association; the authors describe a potential role."]},"route":"/key-papers/paper-chu-pan-cancer-t-cell-atlas-nat-med-2023/","neighbours":{"institution":[{"id":"md-anderson","kind":"institution","name":"MD Anderson Cancer Center","route":"/institutions/md-anderson/"}],"term":[{"id":"single-cell-rna-seq","kind":"term","name":"Single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq, 10x Chromium)","route":"/terms/single-cell-rna-seq/"}],"person":[{"id":"cassian-yee","kind":"person","name":"Cassian Yee","route":"/people/cassian-yee/"}],"journal":[{"id":"nature-medicine","kind":"journal","name":"Nature Medicine","route":"/journals/nature-medicine/"}]}}