The prognostic impact of specific CD4 T-cell responses is critically dependent on the target antigen in melanoma

Frequency of Immune Cell Subtypes in Peripheral Blood Correlates With Outcome for Patients With Metastatic Breast Cancer Treated With High-Dose Chemotherapy

BACKGROUND

The frequency of circulating leukocytes has been shown to be a prognostic factor in patients being treated for different types of cancer. In breast cancer, tumor-infiltrating leukocytes may predict patient outcome, but few studies have investigated such associations for circulating leukocytes.

PATIENTS AND METHODS

Multiparametric flow cytometry was used to examine the immunophenotypes of circulating peripheral blood mononuclear cells for 88 patients with metastatic breast cancer, which was then correlated to breast cancer-specific survival. Patients had been treated either with high-dose cyclophosphamide-containing regimens (group 1, n = 51 patients) or high-dose paclitaxel-containing regimens (group 2, n = 37 patients).

RESULTS

The frequency of peripheral blood CD14⁺ monocytes indicated prognosis for patients in group 1 (but not group 2), while higher levels of CD11c⁺ dendritic cells indicated a better prognosis for patients in group 2 (but not group 1). The frequency of a number of different CD4⁺ or CD8⁺ T cell subtypes also predicted prognosis for patients in group 2. For example, patients in group 2 with a higher frequency of circulating CD4⁺ or CD8⁺ naive T cells (CD45RA⁺CD95-CD27⁺CD28⁺) showed a poorer prognosis. In contrast, T cells were not associated with prognosis for patients in group 1.

CONCLUSION

Circulating leukocytes can predict clinical outcome for patients with breast cancer. Prediction of clinical outcome in this cohort of metastatic breast cancer patients was specific to the type of chemotherapy, and this finding is likely to apply to other therapies.

Advances in Proteomic Techniques for Cytokine Analysis: Focus on Melanoma Research

Melanoma is a skin cancer with permanently increasing incidence and resistance to therapies in advanced stages. Reports of spontaneous regression and tumour infiltration with T-lymphocytes makes melanoma candidate for immunotherapies. Cytokines are key factors regulating immune response and intercellular communication in tumour microenvironment. Cytokines may be used in therapy of melanoma to modulate immune response. Cytokines also possess diagnostic and prognostic potential and cytokine production may reflect effects of immunotherapies. The purpose of this review is to give an overview of recent advances in proteomic techniques for the detection and quantification of cytokines in melanoma research. Approaches covered span from mass spectrometry to immunoassays for single molecule detection (ELISA, western blot), multiplex assays (chemiluminescent, bead-based (Luminex) and planar antibody arrays), ultrasensitive techniques (Singulex, Simoa, immuno-PCR, proximity ligation/extension assay, immunomagnetic reduction assay), to analyses of single cells producing cytokines (ELISpot, flow cytometry, mass cytometry and emerging techniques for single cell secretomics). Although this review is focused mainly on cancer and particularly melanoma, the discussed techniques are in general applicable to broad research field of biology and medicine, including stem cells, development, aging, immunology and intercellular communication.

Prognostic significance of tumor infiltrating immune cells in oral squamous cell carcinoma

Background

Prognostic factors aid in the stratification and treatment of cancer. This study evaluated prognostic importance of tumor infiltrating immune cell in patients with oral squamous cell carcinoma.

Methods

Profiles of infiltrating immune cells and clinicopathological data were available for 78 OSCC patients with a median follow-up of 48 months. The infiltrating intensity of CD8, CD4, T-bet, CD68 and CD57 positive cells were assessed by immunohistochemistry. Chi-square test was used to compare immune markers expression and clinicopathological parameters. Univariate and multivariate COX proportional hazard models were used to assess the prognostic discriminator power of immune cells. The predictive potential of immune cells for survival of OSCC patients was determined using ROC and AUC.

Results

The mean value of CD8, CD4, T-bet, CD68 and CD57 expression were 28.99, 62.06, 8.97, 21.25 and 15.75 cells per high-power field respectively. The patient cohort was separated into low and high expression groups by the mean value. Higher CD8 expression was associated with no regional lymph node metastasis (p = 0.033). Patients with more abundant stroma CD57⁺ cells showed no metastasis into regional lymph node (p = 0.005), and early clinical stage (p = 0.016). The univariate COX regression analyses showed that no lymph node involvement (p < 0.001), early clinical stage (TNM staging I/II vs III/IV, p = 0.007), higher CD8 and CD57 expression (p < 0.001) were all positively correlated with longer overall survival. Multivariate COX regression analysis showed that no lymph node involvement (p = 0.008), higher CD8 (p = 0.03) and CD57 (p < 0.001) expression could be independent prognostic indicators of better survival. None of CD4, T-bet or CD68 was associated with survival in ether univariate or multivariate analysis. ROC and AUC showed that the predictive accuracy of CD8 and CD57 were all superior compared with TNM staging. CD57 (AUC = 0.868; 95% CI, 0.785–0.950) and CD8 (AUC = 0.784; 95% CI, 0.680–0.889) both provided high predictive accuracy, of which, CD57 was the best predictor.

Conclusion

Tumor stroma CD57 and CD8 expression was associated with lymphnode status and independently predicts survival of OSCC patients. Our results suggest an active immune microenvironment in OSCC that may be targetable by immune drugs.

Melanoma: oncogenic drivers and the immune system

Advances and in-depth understanding of the biology of melanoma over the past 30 years have contributed to a change in the consideration of melanoma as one of the most therapy-resistant malignancies. The finding that oncogenic BRAF mutations drive tumor growth in up to 50% of melanomas led to a molecular therapy revolution for unresectable and metastatic disease. Moving beyond BRAF, inactivation of immune regulatory checkpoints that limit T cell responses to melanoma has provided targets for cancer immunotherapy. In this review, we discuss the molecular biology of melanoma and we focus on the recent advances of molecularly targeted and immunotherapeutic approaches.