Fig. 1

Effect of conventional neoadjuvant chemoradiation on immune cells in patient blood. a Absolute numbers of i) CD3⁺, ii) CD8⁺, iii) CD4⁺ and iv) CD4⁺CD25⁺ T cells as well as v) SSC^intCD14⁺ monocytes and vi) SSC^hiCD15⁺ granulocytes by flow cytometry of fresh peripheral blood over the course of the study. Individual patients are gray, the mean is black. Dotted lines show sampling times and shows periods of neoadjuvant and adjuvant chemotherapy (red rectangles), neoadjuvant chemoradiation (blue bar) according to the trial schema provided in Additional file 1: Figure S1. b Analysis of the proportions of i) CD4 and ii) CD8 subpopulations in PBMC collected pretreatment (open circles) and post-treatment (closed circles). Key: NS – not significant. * p < 0.05