{"entity":{"id":"tertiary-lymphoid-structures","kind":"term","name":"Tertiary lymphoid structures (TLS)","aka":["tertiary lymphoid structures","tertiary lymphoid structure","TLS"],"tldr":"Tertiary lymphoid structures are organised clusters of immune cells that form inside tumours and resemble small lymph nodes; their presence is linked to better immunotherapy outcomes.","summary":"Sautès-Fridman and colleagues review tertiary lymphoid structures as organised aggregates of B cells, T cells and dendritic cells that develop in chronically inflamed tissues including tumours, where they are generally associated with longer survival and response to checkpoint inhibitors. Because they are visible on H&E and spatial assays, they are a known-biology probe: a slide or spatial model that recovers TLS is learning something real.","asOf":"2026-09-24","links":[{"label":"Sautès-Fridman et al., Tertiary lymphoid structures in the era of cancer immunotherapy (Nature Reviews Cancer 2019)","url":"https://doi.org/10.1038/s41568-019-0144-6"}],"tags":["cansim-terms"],"related":["cancer-ai-vocabulary"],"cancers":[],"sections":[],"technologies":["spatial-transcriptomics"],"targets":[],"drugs":[],"companies":[],"institutions":[],"pathways":[],"terms":["immunotherapy-response","microenvironment-inflammation-theory"],"trials":[],"people":[],"bottlenecks":[],"keyPapers":[],"journals":[],"dependsOn":[],"notes":["Listed in the CanSim terms map 1.0.0 (docs/onco/terms.json, generated 2026-09-24), CC BY 4.0, attribution: CanSim project, an open, public-data-first cancer foundation-model programme; CanSim page path /terms/tertiary-lymphoid-structures."],"provenance":{"editedBy":"OnCo CanSim terms wave (Wikipedia summaries, standards and project pages, GDC and FDA pages, Europe PMC)","editedOn":"2026-09-24","note":"CanSim terms map 1.0.0 (docs/onco/terms.json, generated 2026-09-24), CC BY 4.0, attribution: CanSim project, an open, public-data-first cancer foundation-model programme"},"category":"Immunology"},"route":"/terms/tertiary-lymphoid-structures/","neighbours":{"term":[{"id":"cancer-ai-vocabulary","kind":"term","name":"Cancer AI vocabulary (CanSim terms map)","route":"/terms/cancer-ai-vocabulary/"},{"id":"immunotherapy-response","kind":"term","name":"Immunotherapy response and its prediction","route":"/terms/immunotherapy-response/"},{"id":"mechanism-of-action-recovery","kind":"term","name":"Mechanism-of-action recovery and known-biology probes","route":"/terms/mechanism-of-action-recovery/"},{"id":"microenvironment-inflammation-theory","kind":"term","name":"Microenvironment and inflammation: tumours as wounds that do not heal","route":"/terms/microenvironment-inflammation-theory/"}],"technology":[{"id":"spatial-transcriptomics","kind":"technology","name":"Spatial transcriptomics","route":"/technologies/spatial-transcriptomics/"}]}}