Fig. 5.

The γδTCR chains are insufficient to classify γδ T immune function. a Three ways to subclassify γδ T cells are δTCR structure-based, cytokine secretion-based, or gene expression pattern (or immunity)-based. To our knowledge, in the context of the TME, a function-based γδ T taxonomy would be more objective than the TCR-based approach to describe their pro- or anti-tumor functions, since the immune function tends to be switchable (the right sketch). b Interestingly, we observed that, in the context of TME challenges, the gene expression pattern of Vδ2 T cell can be skewed toward that of Vδ1⁺ T cell (the left sketch graph). For example, our group recently discovered that cancer cell coincubation or amino acid (glutamine) stress, which are the common features of the TME, can skew Vδ2 T cells towards a Vδ1-like T cells (at the gene expression level) (the right graph)