Persistent pre-exhausted CD8+ T cells shape the tumor immune microenvironment in anaplastic thyroid cancer

A computational pipeline was constructed to identify ATC-specific immune cell populations and differentially expressed genes via multiple independent ATC and PTC single-cell transcriptomes.A total of 221 uniquely differentially expressed genes associated with the adaptive immune response across two ATC datasets were identified.Markedly prevalent pre-exhausted CD8+ T cells in ATC datasets compared with PTC datasets were identified.One hundred fifteen potential biomarker genes of pre-exhausted CD8+ T cells were identified, with GNLY experimentally validated as the top candidate.