The Tumor Inflammation Signature (TIS) quantifies the magnitude of a peripherally suppressed, adaptive immune response in the tumor microenvironment. It has been trained and validated by Merck® to predict response to single agent Pembrolizumab, independent of tumor cell of origin. The 18 genes in the signature measure factors including CD8 cell abundance, NK cell abundance, antigen presentation and processing, interferon gamma signaling, cytotoxicity, and co-inhibitory signaling.

This report contains additional signatures trained to measure the key biology of the tumor-immune interaction. Signature scores range from approximately 0 to 10, and most scores have average values of 5 in TCGA. Each unit increase in a signature score corresponds to a doubling of the biological process it measures.

The TIS and all other scores are computed after normalization to 10 housekeeping genes.