1. Tumor infiltrating T cells influence prognosis in stage I–III non-small cell lung cancer
- Author
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Alessandro Marra, Lars Henning Schmidt, Arik Bernard Schulze, Michael Mohr, Georg Evers, Jan Rehkämper, Dennis Görlich, Ludger Hillejan, and Birthe Heitkötter
- Subjects
0301 basic medicine ,Pulmonary and Respiratory Medicine ,business.industry ,Large cell ,non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) ,FOXP3 ,medicine.disease ,03 medical and health sciences ,030104 developmental biology ,0302 clinical medicine ,030220 oncology & carcinogenesis ,medicine ,Carcinoma ,Cancer research ,Adenocarcinoma ,Cytotoxic T cell ,Original Article ,business ,Lung cancer ,CD8 - Abstract
BACKGROUND: T cell infiltration in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) is essential for the immunological response to malignant tissue, especially in the era of immune-checkpoint inhibition. To investigate the prognostic impact of CD4(+) T helper cells (T(h)), CD8(+) cytotoxic (T(c)) and FOXP3(+) regulatory T (T(reg)) cells in NSCLC, we performed this analysis. METHODS: By counterstaining of CD4, CD8 and FOXP3 we used immunohistochemistry on tissue microarrays (TMA) to evaluate peritumoral T(h) cells, T(reg) cells and T(c) cells in n=294 NSCLC patients with pTNM stage I–III disease. RESULTS: Strong CD4(+) infiltration was associated with higher tumor stages and lymphonodal spread. However, strong CD4(+) infiltration yielded improved overall survival (OS) (P=0.014) in adenocarcinoma (ADC) and large cell carcinoma (LCC) but not in squamous cell carcinoma (SCC). A CD4/CD8 ratio 0.05). Here, prognostic effects were prominent in PD-L1 positive SCC (P=0.023) but not in PD-L1 negative SCC (P=0.236). CONCLUSIONS: High proportion of CD8(+) T(c) cells correlated with improved prognostic outcome in stage I–III NSCLC. T(h) cells and T(reg) cells have implications on outcome with respect to tumor histology and biology.
- Published
- 2020