Figure 5. Neighborhood analysis in the morphological and functional TILs categories.

The result of the neighborhood analysis for active (A), exhausted (B), brisk (C), and non-brisk (D) cases represented as cellular social networks. The thickness of the edge in the network represents the level of interaction between the different cell types. The colour of the line indicates interactions leading to immune suppression (red), to immune stimulation (green), to a probably sub-optimal/impaired immune stimulation (orange), no immune implications (blue). The brisk and active plots display a lot of similairies; nevertheless, the brisk and non brisk categories are not exactly overlapping with the active and exhausted plots, suggesting them to be the result of cases with activation and cases with exhaustion pooled together under the morphological labels. (E) The histogram shows the alternative approach of neighbourhood analysis tailored to explore specifically the interactions regarding melanoma cells. We observed that the main inflammatory cells subtypes in contact with melanoma cells are macrophages and (as expected) epithelial cells, both in brisk and non-brisk cases, followed by Tcy with active and in transition Tcy in brisk cases and proliferating and anergic Tcy in non-brisk cases. Other small differences between brisk and non-brisk cases are more TIM3+ cDC1, cDC2 and TIM3+ macrophages in contact with melanoma cells in brisk cases.