Figure 2.

Systems immunology approach for T_EX characterization using mass cytometry. Selection of suitable exhaustion markers able to differentiate T_EX from T_EFF and T_MEM such as by transcriptomic or epigenomic profiling is a critical step for T_EX-directed immune profiling using mass cytometry. High-dimensional analysis of T_EX provides further insights into the heterogeneity of T_EX that can be unraveled by a bioinformatics pipeline including cluster identification and dimension reduction strategies (i.e., tSNE, Phenograph) that provide detailed overview about the exhaustion landscape. Detailed T_EX subset profiling provides the basis for understanding the heterogeneity of T_EX and their involvement in different disease settings, such as chronic infection and cancer. Data-driven visualizations in this figure were computed based on a dataset published in Bengsch et al. (12).