Figure 1: A gradient of glucocorticoid receptor expression and signaling in CD8⁺ TILs.

GR expression in TILs harvested from mice bearing MC38-Ova^dim colon carcinoma (tumor size 100–120 mm²) (A,B) or from human colon carcinoma (C).

A) Representative histograms of GR expression and summary data of mean fluorescence intensity (MFI) in the indicated CD8⁺ TILs populations. (n=5)

B) Representative histograms of GR expression and summary data of MFI in OVA-specific CD8⁺ TILs. (n=5)

C) Representative histograms of GR expression and summary data of MFI in CD8⁺ TILs. Data are normalized to the expression level in Tim-3^-PD-1^- CD8⁺ TILs. (n=7)

D) tSNE plot showing projection of a (I) GC signature, (II) naïve CD8⁺T cell signature, (III) CD8⁺ T cell dysfunction signature onto the single-cell RNA profiles of CD8⁺ TILs (Singer et al., 2016). The contour marks cells showing highest expression and the color scale indicates low (blue) to high (red) expressing cells. (IV) Each cell in the dataset was scored for the three normalized signatures: GC, Naïve, and Dysfunction. Cells were then sorted based on their expression of the glucocorticoid signature from low (blue) to high (red) (x-Axis). The y-axis indicates the naive (blue) and dysfunction (red) signature score for each of the sorted cells. Moving average (shaded area) and smoothing conditional means (solid line) was used to aid visualization.

*p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001, ****p < 0.0001. One-way ANOVA (Tukey’s multiple comparisons test) or unpaired Student’s t test. Mean ± SEM is shown.