Abstract

Background

A sequential combination of radiochemotherapy/endocrinotherapy and cytokine-induced killer cell (CIK) infusion has been shown to be an effective therapy for post-mastectomy breast cancer based on statistical analysis of the patient population. However, whether an individual could obtain an improved prognosis from CIK cell-based treatment remains unknown. In the present study, we focused on immune microenvironment regulation and specifically investigated the relationship between PD-L1 expression and survival benefit from CIK immunotherapy in breast cancer.

Methods

A total of 310 postoperative breast cancer patients who received comprehensive treatment were enrolled in this retrospective study, including 160 patients in the control group (received chemotherapy/radiotherapy/endocrinotherapy) and 150 patients in the CIK cell treatment group (received chemotherapy/radiotherapy/ endocrinotherapy and subsequent CIK infusion).

Results

We found that overall survival (OS) and recurrence-free survival (RFS) were significantly better in the CIK group than that in the control group. PD-L1 expression in tumor tissue sections was showed to be an independent prognostic factor for patients in the CIK treatment group using multivariate survival analysis. Further survival analysis in the CIK group showed that patients with PD-L1 tumor expression exhibited longer OS and RFS. In addition, among all patients who were enrolled in this study, only the patients with PD-L1 expression experienced survival benefits from CIK treatment.

Conclusions

Our study showed the relationship between PD-L1 expression and CIK therapy and revealed that PD-L1 expression in the tumor is as an indicator of adjuvant CIK therapy for postoperative breast cancer.

Details

Title
PD-L1 expression is a predictive biomarker for CIK cell-based immunotherapy in postoperative patients with breast cancer
Author
Zi-Qi, Zhou; Jing-Jing, Zhao; Qiu-Zhong, Pan; Chang-Long, Chen; Liu, Yuan; Tang, Yan; Zhu, Qian; De-Sheng, Weng; Jian-Chuan Xia
Section
Research Article
Publication year
2019
Publication date
Aug 2019
Publisher
BMJ Publishing Group LTD
e-ISSN
20511426
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
English
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1186/s40425-019-0696-8
ProQuest document ID
2638110278
Copyright
© 2019 The Author(s). Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ ), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver ( http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated. Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.