Figure 2.

Immune-related transcripts and proteins are upregulated in adipose tissue in the setting of cancer. (A) Schematic describing the approach to assessing immunologic changes in VAT in cancer bearing mice. Note that RNA-sequencing and cytokine quantification were performed using VAT samples from the same mice, while flow cytometry and antibody quantification were performed using VAT samples from two separate experiments. Mice were 7 weeks old at the time of tumor inoculation. (B) Volcano plot highlighting genes which are most strongly upregulated (subset shown in red) and downregulated (subset shown in blue) in VAT of cancer bearing mice compared to that of sham-operated mice. (C) Bubble plot showing KEGG pathways enriched based on RNA-sequencing data depicted in (B). Immune-related pathways that are upregulated are highlighted in red. (D) IL-6 quantification by cytokine array shows elevation in VAT of cancer bearing mice. (E–F) Quantification of total IgG1 (E) and IgG2b (F) by ELISA in VAT of cancer bearing and sham-operated mice. (G) Quantification of B cells as a fraction of total CD45⁺ cells in VAT by flow cytometry. Statistical analyses were performed using the Mann–Whitney test; mean ± SD is shown.