Chinese Expert Consensus on Assessment and Clinical Application of 
Tertiary Lymphoid Structure for Non-small Cell Lung Cancer (2025 Version)

Abstract

The tertiary lymphoid structure (TLS) plays a crucial role in the tumor microenvironment, influencing tumor development and progression. As an emerging biomarker for predicting the prognosis and treatment response in cancer patients, TLS has received increasing attention. However, there is currently a lack of standardized evaluation criteria for TLS, and significant differences exist in TLS across different tumor tissues. This poses challenges for the clinical application of this biomarker in translation. To meet the clinical diagnosis and treatment needs of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), this consensus focuses on the definition, clinical significance, testing components, and assessment methods of TLS in NSCLC. Combining relevant research and Chinese clinical practice, it provides standardized and normalized suggestions for the clinical assessment and application of TLS, so as to improve the understanding of TLS among clinicians and pathologists, and provide a reference basis for the clinical application of the detection of TLS in NSCLC.

Keywords

• lung neoplasms
• tertiary lymphoid structure
• assessment
• clinical application
• consensus