Virtual AI-informed immunocyte profiling (VAIP) from H&E as a predictor of multi-cancer prognosis.
3118 Background: Improved risk stratification is critically needed across multiple cancers to guide treatment decisions. This includes reducing overtreatment in Ductal Carcinoma in Situ (DCIS), addressing late recurrence risk in estrogen receptor-positive/lymph node-negative (ER+/LN-) breast cancer (BC), and refining prognosis in head & neck squamous cell carcinomas (HNSCC), and high-grade serous ovarian carcinoma (HGSOC). Tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) reflect anti-tumor immunity, whereas tumor-associated macrophages (TAMs) polarize toward anti-tumor M1-like (CD68+) or immunosuppressive M2-like (CD163+) phenotypes. Integrating TILs with TAM polarization markers may better capture inflammatory balance and improve outcome prediction. We developed a hematoxylin and eosin (H&E)-only AI method (VAIP) to quantify TILs and virtual CD68/CD163 TAMs to develop multi-cancer based potential prognostic models. Methods: TILs were detected on H&E with HoVer-UNet, and virtual CD68 and CD163 macrophages were inferred with VISTA. In cancer regions, we computed cell densities and immune-balance ratios and trained cancer-specific Cox models with compact feature sets (DCIS 6; HGSOC 7; ER+ 4; HNSCC 4). Prognostic stratification used disease-free survival (DFS) for DCIS (N=273), HGSOC (training N=165, independent test N=220), and ER+ BC (training N=144, test N=622), and overall survival (OS) for HNSCC (N=77), reflecting clinical endpoints. Evaluation used cross-validation for cohorts without an external test set (DCIS, HNSCC) and independent training and testing when independent cohort was available (HGSOC, ER+). Results: Risk stratification performance across cancer types is in Table 1. The DCIS model used 6 features, largely TIL-macrophage contrast ratios (TIL/M2, TIL/M1). HGSOC used 7 features with a similar ratio-heavy immune-balance signature, plus macrophage-normalized density and polarization metrics (e.g., M1/N, M/N). In contrast, ER+ BC and HNSCC achieved best performance with 4 features dominated by macrophage measures, particularly M2 density and the M1/M2 ratio. Across sites, CD163-related macrophage metrics and immune-balance ratios were consistently informative. Conclusions: Integrating H&E-visible TILs with virtual CD68/CD163 TAMs enables fully automated, H&E-only prognostic biomarkers that stratify OS and DFS across multiple cancers, demonstrating consistent prognostic value in DCIS, ER+ BC, HGSOC, and HNSCC. These findings support further study of this histomorphometric risk classifier through broader external and prospective validation. Performance across cancer types. Cancer Type Cohort C-index HR [95% CI] p-value DCIS All 0.616 1.76 [1.20-2.59] <0.001 DCIS RT/No-treatment 0.624 1.94 [1.15-3.26] 0.003 HGSOC Test 0.553 1.38 [1.02-1.87] 0.030 ER+ BC Test 0.577 1.51 [1.00-2.28] 0.004 HNSCC All 0.603 1.92 [1.03-3.36] 0.012
Authors
- Sunil Badve (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8861-9980)
- Scott Michael Steward-Tharp (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5865-4539)
- Martina Bazzaro
- Qiuying Shi (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0224-3167)
- Mangesh A. Thorat (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8673-5320)
- Mayukhmala Jana (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0179-8240)
- Paula Toro (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6009-3718)
- Sandra Oršulić (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5119-8721)
- Theodoros N. Teknos
- Nikhil Shanbhogue
- Tilak Pathak
- James S. Lewis
- Anant Madabhushi
- Germán Corredor
- Quintin Pan
- Arpit Aggarwal
- Nicole Cherie Schmitt
- Jay Wasman
- Nabil F. Saba
Institutions
- Georgia Institute of Technology (US)
- Cleveland Clinic (US)
- Emory University (US)
- University of California, Los Angeles (US)
- Oregon Health & Science University (US)
- Queen Mary University of London (GB)
- Veterans Health Administration (US)
- Women's Cancer Center of Nevada (US)
- University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center (US)
- University Hospitals Seidman Cancer Center (US)
- Mayo Clinic Hospital (US)
- Winship Cancer Institute
Publication Details
- Journal
- Journal of Clinical Oncology
- Published
- 2026-05-27
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1200/jco.2026.44.16_suppl.3118
- Primary Topic
- Cancer Immunotherapy and Biomarkers
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00