PO.TB01.01 · 肿瘤生物学
AI驱动的深度表型分析:视觉Transformer在三维血管化肿瘤芯片中量化血管正常化和免疫疗效
AI-powered deep phenotyping: Vision transformers quantify vessel normalization and immune efficacy in a 3D vascularized tumor-on-a-chip
作者与单位 Authors & Affiliations
摘要 Abstract
中文摘要
引言:功能失调、混乱的肿瘤血管系统形成了阻碍免疫浸润的敌对性物理屏障,严重限制了免疫疗法的疗效。传统模型无法复制这种结构复杂性或血管与免疫细胞之间的动态相互作用。为解决这一问题,我们验证了一个高通量、AI驱动的血管化肿瘤微环境(TME)平台,该平台不仅旨在模拟这一屏障,还能严格量化肿瘤诱导的血管生成、血管正常化及下游免疫细胞行为。
方法:利用Qureator的微生理系统(MPS),我们生成了具有可灌注血管系统的患者来源胃癌模型。为验证预测效用,模型接受FDA批准的抗血管生成药物(如Ramucirumab,一种胃癌二线疗法)和一组血管正常化试剂的处理。我们开发了一个定制的、机器学习驱动的视觉Transformer(ViT)流程来分析免疫荧光图像。与传统形态学工具不同,我们的ViT方法利用自注意力机制捕捉全局依赖关系,从而能够严格量化高维深度表型特征。
结果:该平台建立了一个临床相关的TME,其中Ramucirumab处理显著降低了瘤周血管密度,准确再现了临床抗血管生成效应。除简单的密度指标外,我们基于ViT的深度表型分析还根据复杂的非线性特征(如血管迂曲度、分支密度和周细胞覆盖率)识别出不同正常化试剂之间的独特表型簇。关键的是,这一高维AI分析揭示了一个直接的功能相关性:诱导特定“正常化”血管特征的试剂与可测量的T细胞介导杀伤效率增加密切相关,将恢复的血管形态与改善的治疗结局联系起来。
结论:这一AI赋能的TME平台代表了一种强大的新方法学(NAMs),将深度学习与复杂生物学相结合,对肿瘤微环境进行“深度表型分析”。通过精确地将血管形态与功能性免疫结局联系起来,它加速了将TME恢复至治疗响应状态的疗法发现。
查看英文原文 English abstract
Introduction: Dysfunctional, chaotic tumor vasculature creates a hostile physical barrier to immune infiltration, severely limiting the efficacy of immunotherapies. Conventional models fail to replicate this structural complexity or the dynamic interplay between vessels and immune cells. To address this, we validated a high-throughput, AI-driven vascularized tumor microenvironment (TME) platform designed not only to model this barrier but to rigorously quantify tumor-induced angiogenesis, vessel normalization, and downstream immune cell behaviors.
Methods: Using the Qureator's microphysiological system (MPS), we generated a patient-derived gastric cancer model with perfusable vasculature. To validate predictive utility, models were treated with FDA-approved anti-angiogenic agents (e.g., Ramucirumab, a second-line therapy for gastric cancer) and a panel of vessel normalization reagents. We developed a customized, machine learning-powered Vision Transformer (ViT) pipeline to analyze immunofluorescence images. Unlike traditional morphological tools, our ViT approach utilizes self-attention mechanisms to capture global dependencies, allowing for the rigorous quantification of high-dimensional deep phenotyping features.
Results: The platform established a clinically relevant TME where Ramucirumab treatment significantly reduced peritumoral vessel density, accurately recapitulating clinical anti-angiogenic effects. Beyond simple density metrics, our ViT-based deep phenotyping identified distinct phenotypic clusters among different normalization reagents based on complex, non-linear features such as vessel tortuosity, branch density, and pericyte coverage. Crucially, this high-dimensional AI analysis revealed a direct functional correlation: reagents that induced a specific "normalized" vascular signature were strongly associated with a measurable increase in T cell-mediated killing efficiency, linking restored vascular morphology to improved therapeutic outcomes.
Conclusion: This AI-enabled TME platform represents a powerful New Approach Methodologies (NAMs), integrating deep learning with complex biology to perform "deep phenotyping" of the tumor microenvironment. By precisely linking vascular morphology to functional immune outcomes, it accelerates the discovery of therapies that restore the TME to a treatment-responsive state.
利益披露 Disclosure
D. K. Donnelly,
Qureator, Inc. Employment.
B. Lee,
Qureator, Inc. Employment.
J. Wang,
Qureator, Inc. Employment.
S. Figueroa Buezo,
Qureator, Inc. Employment.
H. Park,
Qureator, Inc. Employment.
B. Rajput,
Qureator, Inc. Employment.
Y. Choi,
Qureator, Inc. Employment.
J. Kim,
Qureator, Inc. Employment.
J. Baek,
Qureator, Inc. Employment.
E. Kim,
Qureator, Inc. Employment.
J. Harris,
Qureator, Inc. Employment.
K. Baek,
Qureator, Inc. Employment.
B. Mitrovic,
Qureator, Inc. Employment.
T. Liu,
Qureator, Inc. Employment.
A. Sathe,
Qureator, Inc. Employment.
S. Yoo,
Qureator, Inc. Employment.