journal contribution
posted on 2023-03-31, 20:32 authored by Ombretta Melaiu, Marco Mina, Marco Chierici, Renata Boldrini, Giuseppe Jurman, Paolo Romania, Valerio D'Alicandro, Maria C. Benedetti, Aurora Castellano, Tao Liu, Cesare Furlanello, Franco Locatelli, Doriana Fruci This figure includes Kaplan-Meier curves of RFS (A, C and E) and EFS (B, D and F) according to the density of the combined PD-L1+ and HLA-I+ tumor-cell densities with tumor infiltrating CD3+ T cells (A and B), tumor infiltrating CD4+ T cells (C and D), and tumor infiltrating CD8+ T cells (E and F).
Funding
AIRC
Italian Ministry of Health
Fondazione Italiana per la Lotta al Neuroblastoma
Fondazione Umberto Veronesi
History
ARTICLE ABSTRACT
Purpose: This study sought to evaluate the expression of programmed cell death-ligand-1 (PD-L1) and HLA class I on neuroblastoma cells and programmed cell death-1 (PD-1) and lymphocyte activation gene 3 (LAG3) on tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes to better define patient risk stratification and understand whether this tumor may benefit from therapies targeting immune checkpoint molecules.Experimental Design: In situ IHC staining for PD-L1, HLA class I, PD-1, and LAG3 was assessed in 77 neuroblastoma specimens, previously characterized for tumor-infiltrating T-cell density and correlated with clinical outcome. Surface expression of PD-L1 was evaluated by flow cytometry and IHC in neuroblastoma cell lines and tumors genetically and/or pharmacologically inhibited for MYC and MYCN. A dataset of 477 human primary neuroblastomas from GEO and ArrayExpress databases was explored for PD-L1, MYC, and MYCN correlation.Results: Multivariate Cox regression analysis demonstrated that the combination of PD-L1 and HLA class I tumor cell density is a prognostic biomarker for predicting overall survival in neuroblastoma patients (P = 0.0448). MYC and MYCN control the expression of PD-L1 in neuroblastoma cells both in vitro and in vivo. Consistently, abundance of PD-L1 transcript correlates with MYC expression in primary neuroblastoma.Conclusions: The combination of PD-L1 and HLA class I represents a novel prognostic biomarker for neuroblastoma. Pharmacologic inhibition of MYCN and MYC may be exploited to target PD-L1 and restore an efficient antitumor immunity in high-risk neuroblastoma. Clin Cancer Res; 23(15); 4462–72. ©2017 AACR.
