Fig. 5

Tumor-derived IL34 promotes high TNF expression in macrophages. A Dot plot showing communication probability between top-ranking ligands expressed by tumor cells and receptors on subclusters of monocytes and macrophages. B UMAP and Violin plots revealing significantly high expression of IL34 in BI-PitNETs. ***, P value < 0.001. C PCR detected the relative expression levels of IL34 in 5 cases of BI and 5 cases of Non-BI PitNETs, with significantly higher IL-34 expression in the BI group. The H-scores for the BI and Non-BI groups are 208.05 ± 17.82 and 24.63 ± 5.58, respectively (p < 0.001). D Immunohistochemical staining was used to detect the relative expression levels of IL34 in 8 cases of BI and 8 cases of Non-BI PitNETs, showing significantly higher IL-34 expression in the BI group. E GSEA of differentially expressed genes ranked by log2FC between BI-TNFα⁺ TAMs and Non-BI-TNFα + TAMs. NES, normalized enrichment score. F Spatial feature plot demonstrating subcluster distribution following Kmeans clustering for spatially weighted PCA of tumor cells. G Spatial feature plot showing imputed expression values of TNF, CCL2 in TNFα⁺ TAMs and, IL34 in tumor cells, as predicted by the trained single-cell data applied to spatial transcriptome space. H Immunofluorescence staining was performed to detect the expression of IL34 and TNF-α in BI PitNETs. IL34 (green) was widely expressed in the tumor tissue, while TNF-α (red) was mainly expressed around macrophages (yellow). I Kaplan-Meier plot displaying the Progression Free Survival in patients with PitNETs, stratified by expression levels of TNF and/or IL34 at the first quartile cutoff point