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Semi-automated approaches for interrogating spatial heterogeneity of tissue samples – Scientific Reports

Time Stamp: February 28, 2024 7:00 PM
Source Node: 541467

Sequential immunofluorescence (seqIF) approach for spatial proteomics

To visualize the composition of tumoral tissues, we used the seqIF protocol on COMET (Fig. 1). The microfluidic setup was previously described and characterized²³, with an adaptation of the scanning area to 81 mm². COMET platform protocols are based on the fast fluidic exchange (FFeX) technology²⁴ (Fig. 1B) that yields in ultra-fast and efficient antibody-based staining (approximately 15 min per single staining step of 2 markers), followed by imaging (approx. 30 min per marker) and elution (approx. 10 min per marker) (Fig. 1C). The immunostaining reaction, that occurs within the closed chamber formed in between the imaging window of the microfluidic chip and the histological slide, is precisely controlled via the automated system and the final signal reliably reflects the amount of antigen present in the tissue²⁵. The seqIF protocol resulted in a co-registered multi-layer OME-TIFF image containing the following layers of information: nuclei signal acquired in the DAPI channel, intrinsic tissue autofluorescence images acquired in both TRITC and Cy5 channels, 20 single biomarker images. Additionally, we acquired the autofluorescence images after each elution cycle that allowed us to precisely monitor the evolution of autofluorescent signal and elution efficiency over the different cycles of the protocol⁹, and to perform accurate background subtraction (see methods chapter: Image pre-processing). COMET images from every cycle were stitched and automatically aligned within the COMET Control software, and the output file was ready for qualitative assessment and quantitative analysis at the end of the seqIF protocol (Fig. 1D).

To challenge the quality of data produced by the COMET device, we used a sample dataset that encompasses several specimens with a heterogenous tissue composition. To efficiently address this challenge, we used ngTMA containing both primary lung tumor samples and the corresponding lymph node metastasis specimens (Fig. 2A,B). The 20-plex panel consisted of biomarkers directly targeting immune cells (CD3, CD4, CD8, CD11c, CD16, CD20, CD31, CD45, CD68, FoxP3, HLA-DR), non-immune tumor microenvironment (aSMA, CD31, PanCK, S100, Vimentin), features of the immunosuppressed microenvironment (IDO-1, PD-1, PD-L1) and the proliferation marker ki67 (Fig. 2C). The specificity of detection of a single biomarker was evaluated according to internal standard guidelines⁹. For all biomarkers, the protocol resulted in high-quality staining that allowed to detect both signal positive and signal negative areas (Fig. 2C–E). Additional images were also acquired after each elution step allowing to assess the elution efficiency that was qualitatively deemed as excellent for all the markers based on quality-control criteria previously reported⁹. Once the initial quality control of the final image was passed, we moved toward the downstream image data analysis.

Nuclei-based cell segmentation and data filtering

We based our analysis on a single-cell feature extraction, which in turn required a reliable cell segmentation approach (Fig. 2F). In the first step of the workflow, single-cell detection was performed based on the DAPI staining. We applied the StarDist method^18,19 to delineate the single-cell annotations. To improve the segmentation results, we internally generated a dataset of 12,138 manually annotated nuclei from a heterogeneous dataset of 234 image crops extracted from COMET images of several tissue types. The validation dataset consisted of 1192 nuclei and was carefully crosschecked internally by manual curation. Training of the model with this dataset was harmonized as per the guidelines provided by the authors¹⁸. The model trained in-house showed a clear trend toward better performance when compared with the standard StarDist model (see methods section: Image segmentation). Once trained, the model was used to generate single-cell masks for the next steps of analysis. Subsequently, the annotation of nuclei was expanded by 5 pixels for each of the cells to obtain a proper cell delineation. The measurements of fluorescent signal intensities and the corresponding detected features were exported from QuPath²⁰ for 68,801 segmented cells stemming from a single raw TMA image.

To ensure high quality of cell detections, we applied a two-step verification process of detected objects. Because of the formalin-based fixation, FFPE tissues are known to be highly autofluorescent²⁶ along with structural elements such as collagen and elastin increasing such confounding phenomena. Additionally, highly vascularized tissues contain a significant number of erythrocytes that can be encountered in all acquisition channels of COMET microscope, including faint signal in DAPI channel. To discriminate between the true cell detections and artefacts caused by autofluorescent signal, we applied a two-step single-cell data cleaning procedure²⁷. Once all measurements were exported, we performed unsupervised clustering for all nucleus features based on the measurements in all channels but DAPI. Using results visualized with UMAP approach (Figure S1A), we could detect 4 clusters that were characterized by high expression of all the markers as well as relatively strong signal in unstained images due to tissue autofluorescence (Figure S1B). Manual curation of these clusters revealed the high levels of erythrocytes’ detection (Figure S1C,D) at each cycle of the seqIF workflow within them and were therefore excluded from subsequent analysis. In the second step of filtering, we excluded objects based on 4 features, (1) model specific feature—StarDist detection probability (cut-off value: 0.65, Figure S2A), (2) signal-based feature—DAPI mean intensity (cut-off value: 2917.1, Figure S2B), and shape-based features— (3) nucleus area (7.1 µm² < accepted value < 137.9 µm², Figure S2C) and (4) nucleus circularity (cut-off value: 0.65, Figure S2D). Visual inspection confirmed that excluded objects were mostly artefacts (Figure S2E, F). In total, 14,229 cells were discarded during the 2 steps of data cleaning with 55,063 cells passing the quality control and deemed as acceptable for the subsequent analysis pipeline.

Before the final step of feature extraction, background subtraction was performed for all channels separately, using the corresponding autofluorescence channel recorded before each cycle⁹. The background subtraction was performed pixel-wise and infrequent negative pixel values were zero-floored.

Dynamic range assessment

To investigate in detail the biomarker expression within the tissues, a single-cell resolution of the image as well as a broad dynamic range of the immunofluorescent signal must be delivered by imaging modality. COMET images have a pixel size of 0.23 μm and a spatial resolution below 1 µm, which is sufficient to clearly discriminate the subcellular biomarker expression patterns and segment cells into their nuclear, cytoplasmic, and membranous compartments (Fig. 2E,F). To investigate if images generated with COMET provide a dynamic range of fluorescent signal sufficient to discriminate different levels of biomarker expression, we examined in more detail the HLA-DR expressing cells in the lung tumor metastasis core of specimen 3 (core C2, Figure S3). HLA-DR protein expression is known to be reflecting the activation status on immune cells as macrophages and dendritic cells²⁸. HLA-DR expression can also be triggered in the tumor cells²⁹, thus its expression levels are expected to be heterogeneous and can vary from negative through low, medium, and high.

In this specimen, we identified a bimodal expression of HLA-DR with high levels expressed by immune cells and low expression found in epithelial tumor cells (Figure S3A). When exploiting the mean cell intensity as a unique parameter to interrogate cell phenotypes, we found distinguishable differences between the two cell types (Figure S3B). When mean cell intensity was compared with the cell size feature on the biaxial scatter plot, both the identification and quantification of immune vs tumor cells could be straightforwardly achieved with a gating strategy (Figure S3C). These data demonstrate that COMET platform has a sufficient resolution and dynamic range to accurately discriminate cell-intrinsic biomarker expression variability.

Supervised phenotyping of tumor microenvironment

Spatial detection of multiple biomarkers enables the identification of diverse cell types present within a tissue. To spatially find predefined cell types based on known expression patterns³⁰, we applied supervised methods based on a priori classification rules as a first approach (Fig. 3A). The 20-plex panel presented here was established with the aim to characterize tumor-infiltrating immune cells within the TME (Fig. 2C). The panel was designed to allow performing a rule-based single-cell phenotyping which uses binary expression features derived with a threshold-based approach (Fig. 3A). We characterized the immune cell infiltration level, along with tumor-intrinsic features and stromal compartments of different cores of a lung cancer TMA.

In the first step of data analysis, we z-normalized mean cell intensities for all 20 biomarkers (Figure S4A,B). Subsequently, we applied an automatic threshold-based approach to determine positive cells for each marker individually. We established a metrics-based approach relying on the statistical characteristics of the background signal (i.e., negative cells) (see Methods chapter: Supervised phenotyping and Figure S4C for more details). This semi-automatic thresholding approach was deployed to eliminate the user bias and harmonize thresholding values over all markers. Our approach successfully detected the positive cells (Figure S4D,E), which was further confirmed by the visual inspection by experienced senior biologists. To identify distinct cell types, we applied a decision tree-based classification (Fig. 3A). Cell identities were manually assigned based on the known marker combinations, which are established in literature³¹. Based on this approach, different cellular classes were detected in most of the cores present in the TMA (Fig. 3B–F). Unknown cells, that did not fit any of the identified classes, were summing up to 30% of all cells and were mainly present in primary tumor cores (Fig. 3B,D) that displayed lower expression levels for markers of interest.

The second most abundant class was a cell type with a predefined phenotype of PanCK+ non-proliferating tumor cells. Visual inspection of randomly selected areas of the TMA confirmed that once the cell type was identified, the phenotyping of the cells was accurate, and it properly reflected the biomarker signal (Fig. 3G). The main limitation of a rule-based classifier stems from the lack of inclusion for the markers lying outside of the established rules. To examine the expression patterns of each pre-defined class, we plotted a heatmap showing the biomarker abundance and distribution for the detected cell types (Fig. 3C). We could confirm the expected expression of Vimentin positivity by immune and stromal cells and its absence within tumor cells. Surprisingly, other markers like CD20, were not limited to CD3- immune cells but also detected to a lower extent in other immune subtypes such as several myeloid and T cell classes. Indeed, for small densely clustered cell types such as lymphocytes, signal spillover through cell masks is one of the most important challenges in threshold-based classification³². Indeed, to minimize the signal leak from neighboring cells into an area used for the phenotyping of T cells, we analyzed the mean intensity of CD3, CD4, and CD8 markers within the nucleus mask and a similar approach for other small cells, as B cells, might help in their threshold-based phenotyping.

Additionally, we have also tested the recently published Astir algorithm as an alternative to developing a fully automated threshold-based pipeline for cell identification³³. This machine learning algorithm was developed to provide unbiased classification of cells into predefined classes³³ and can be easily applied to COMET image-derived data. We aimed to detect the same classes as in our decision tree-based classifier (Figure S5A). Astir algorithm detected unknown cells with the highest frequency, especially in primary tumor cores, while immunosuppressive tumor cells were the second most frequent cell type identified (Figure S5B–D). Similarly, to the threshold-based classifier, the simple phenotypes were assigned as expected with a few rules (Figure S5A), while the assignment of complex phenotypes, (i.e., dendritic cells) turned out to be more challenging.

Unsupervised cell classification and spatial cell distribution

After evaluating how supervised classification methods can be applied to a COMET dataset, we explored unsupervised classification as an alternative automated workflow (Fig. 4). We performed Leiden clustering³⁴ and UMAP dimensionality reduction technique³⁵ for data visualization.

Leiden clustering resulted in the detection of 20 clusters (Figure S8), that were merged into 14 clusters (Fig. 4A, see below) after detailed examination and analysis as described below. For each cluster, we further examined the expression patterns of the corresponding signature markers—for example, for the regulatory T cells cluster we generated a mean intensity projection for the signature markers of cells belonging to this cluster, where the expected localization of FoxP3, CD3 and CD4 expression was confirmed (Fig. 4B). Similarly, we could identify the exclusive cytoplasmic expression of PanCK with no nuclear interference (Fig. 4B). It further demonstrates that the spatial resolution obtained is sufficient to quantify the spatial biomarker expression at a sub-cellular level. Additionally, the known expression patterns can be used for optimization and quality control of unsupervised cell approximation algorithms.

Following the unsupervised classification step, cell identity for each class was assessed based on the following parameters: (1) expression level of the markers in corresponding sub-cellular compartments (Table 1) in each of the clusters (Fig. 4A,C, Figure S7), (2) visual inspection of the cells in the tissue context, and (3) literature reference. Using this method, 6 clusters expressing heterogeneous levels of PanCK were identified, all of them located nearby in the UMAP representation graph (Figure S8A,B). Therefore, we merged these clusters into a metacluster of tumor cells (Figure S8C). As a result, the tumor cell cluster was the most abundant in this dataset, which is expected, considering that 39% of the original image area is PanCK positive (PanCK+) (See details in the Methods chapter: Image segmentation). However, the total stromal components outnumbered the number of the PanCK+ cells corroborating the high infiltration of non-tumoral cells previously reported for lung tumors^36,37. Some clusters were consistently detected in all specimens, with a higher frequency of activated T cells, B cells and the CD11c+ macrophages being present in the secondary tumors. Importantly, the spatial evaluation of the clusters revealed the degree of tissue heterogeneity and the different patterns of immune infiltrations between specimens of primary and metastatic cancer tissues (Fig. 4G,H).

Once the phenotypic classes were properly assigned to each cluster identified in Fig. 4, we investigated the degree of cell proximity and interaction to identify interacting cells in the analyzed COMET dataset. Due to a large fraction of unknown cells in the supervised approach, we have decided to perform the spatial examination of the clusters identified via the unsupervised clustering approach. We applied spatial characteristics such as cellular neighborhood enrichment score and the co-occurrence probability (Fig. 5A–C). Due to the small size of the TMA cores, the results are not fully representative of the original tissue milieu, however, we could observe, that macrophages tended to localize to a greater extent in proximity to the tumor cells (Fig. 5C), while T cells tended to remain further from tumor cells. Interestingly, the distribution of T regulatory cells seemed to differ between primary and metastatic tumors with more frequent homotypic T regulatory cells’ neighborhood (Fig. 5B) and intracellular interactions (Fig. 5D) in metastatic cores. Tumor cell homotypic interactions, reported previously³⁸, were also detected in our dataset (Fig. 5B,D). Preliminary observations on spatial characteristics highlighted the potential of a spatial analysis approach to identify tissue-specific patterns of cell distributions.

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Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-55387-w

Semi-automated approaches for interrogating spatial heterogeneity of tissue samples – Scientific Reports

Sequential immunofluorescence (seqIF) approach for spatial proteomics

Nuclei-based cell segmentation and data filtering

Dynamic range assessment

Supervised phenotyping of tumor microenvironment

Unsupervised cell classification and spatial cell distribution

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