Fig. 2: Association between germinal center formation in lymph nodes, stromal TILs and tertiary lymphoid structures.

a Violin plots, showing the distribution of germinal centers (GCs) compared to sTILs with 20% cut-off (<20% sTILs (n = 86) and ≥20% sTILs (n = 75)) (X axis), in cancer-free LNs (left), and involved LNs (right). b Scatter plot of the number of GCs compared to the maximum number of GCs in a single LN (left side); and compared to the number of LNs which contain GCs (right side). c Scatter plots of the number of GCs in all assessed LNs (left) and all cancer-free assessed LNs (right) compared to the number of LNs. d Violin plots, showing the distribution of GCs compared to peritumoral TLS (Absent (n = 123) and present (n = 38)), in cancer-free LNs (left), and involved LNs (right). Mann–Whitney U tests were used to calculate P values.