A single biomarker is not adequate to identify patients with gastric cancer (GC) who have the potential to benefit from anti-PD-1/PD-L1 therapy, presumably owing to the complexity of the tumour microenvironment. The predictive value of tumour-infiltrating immune cells (TIICs) has not been definitively established with regard to their density and spatial organisation. Here, multiplex immunohistochemistry is used to quantify in situ biomarkers at sub-cellular resolution in 80 patients with GC. To predict the response to immunotherapy, we establish a multi-dimensional TIIC signature by considering the density of CD4+FoxP3−PD-L1+, CD8+PD-1−LAG3−, and CD68+STING+ cells and the spatial organisation of CD8+PD-1+LAG3− T cells. The TIIC signature enables prediction of the response of patients with GC to anti-PD-1/PD-L1 immunotherapy and patient survival. Our findings demonstrate that a multi-dimensional TIIC signature may be relevant for the selection of patients who could benefit the most from anti-PD-1/PD-L1 immunotherapy.

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How deceleration capacity (DC) and acceleration capacity (AC) of heart rate associated with atrial fibrillation (AF) and ablation is still not clear. The dynamic changes of AC, DC and conventional heart rate variability (HRV) parameters were characterized in 154 subjects before circumferential pulmonary veins isolation (CPVI) and three days, 3 months and 6 months after CPVI. The DCs of the recurrent group decreased significantly at each time point after CPVI; the DCs of the recurrence-free group before CPVI and three days, 3 months and 6 months after CPVI were 7.06 ± 1.77, 3.79 ± 1.18, 4.22 ± 1.96 and 3.97 ± 0.98 ms respectively, which also decreased significantly at each time point and were significantly lower than these of recurrent group. Conversely, the AC of recurrent and recurrence-free groups increased significantly at each time point after CPVI; the ACs of recurrence-fee group were significantly higher than these of recurrent group at each time point. No stable difference trend of HRV parameters was found between two groups. Further Kaplan–Meier analysis showed that DC < 4.8 ms or AC ≥ −5.1 ms displayed significant higher recurrence-free rates. In conclusion, high AC and low DC imply higher AF-free rate after ablation.

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