Tertiary lymphoid structures correlate with enhancement of antitumor immunity in esophageal squamous cell carcinoma

Background Tertiary lymphoid structures (TLSs) are associated with a favorable prognosis in several cancers. However, the correlation between TLSs and outcomes of esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) and the impact of TLSs on the tumor immune microenvironment (TIME) remain unknown. Methods We pathologically evaluated the significance of TLSs in ESCC focusing on TLS maturation using 180 ESCC specimens and performed single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) using 14 ESCC tissues to investigate functional differences of immune cells according to TLS presence. Results TLS+ cases had better recurrence-free-survival (RFS) ( p