PD‐1 and PD‐L1 in locoregionally advanced nasopharyngeal carcinoma: Substudy of a randomized phase III trial

Abstract

Background To evaluate the expression of programmed death‐1 (PD‐1) and programmed death‐ligand 1 (PD‐L1) by using immunohistochemistry analysis in locoregionally advanced nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) patients receiving cisplatin, fluorouracil, and docetaxel followed by concurrent chemoradiotherapy. Methods As part of a previously reported trial, 108 patients were enrolled in this study. Results We observed that Epstein–Barr Virus (EBV) antibody levels were associated with PD‐1 positive staining in NPC and PD‐1 positive staining was identified as an independent prognostic factor for progression‐free survival (hazard ratio 0.363, 95% confidence interval 0.134‐0.987, P = .047). By contrast, the correlation between the PD‐L1 level and hemoglobin, lactate dehydrogenase and high‐sensitivity C‐reactive protein was not identified. Moreover, high levels of PD‐L1 staining were not significantly associated with clinical outcomes. Conclusion NPC patients with negative PD‐1 staining had a significantly reduced survival outcome. Furthermore, patients with positive PD‐1 staining had significantly higher EBV antibody levels.

The prognostic significance of PD-L1 and PD-1 expression in patients with nasopharyngeal carcinoma: a systematic review and meta-analysis

“…Among all the original reports eligible in our study, some of the studies demonstrated that relatively higher expression of PD-L1 or PD-1 in NPC predicts worse prognosis [22, 24, 26, 28, 29, 31, 34–36]. The most common and convincing explanation for the result was the interactions of PD-1 and PD-L1 would lead to immune suppression and promote tumor progression [38, 40].…”

“…A total of 1836 patients from 15 included studies concerning PD-L1 [15–17, 22–33] and 678 patients from six studies regarding PD-1 [22, 30, 31, 34–36] were included in the meta-analysis. The publication year of PD-L1 and PD-1 ranged from 2014 to 2018 and 2010 to 2018, respectively.…”

Prognostic Value of Programmed Cell Death Ligand-1 Expression in Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma: A Meta-Analysis of 1,315 Patients

“…Thereafter, the full text of 16 studies was assessed; five studies were excluded because of insufficient data ( n = 2), duplicate studies from the same research group ( n = 2), and no use of IHC ( n = 1). Finally, 11 studies were included in this meta-analysis (18–23, 26, 27, 31–33).…”

“…Using immunohistochemistry (IHC), PD-L1 overexpression was shown to be associated with a poor prognosis across multiple tumor types (10, 13), including non-small cell lung cancer (14), hepatocellular carcinoma (15), colorectal cancer (16), and renal cell carcinoma (17). Several studies also demonstrated the relationship between PD-L1 expression and prognosis of patients with NPC; however, results were controversial (18–23). Therefore, we conducted a meta-analysis to assess the impact of PD-L1 on the prognosis of patients with NPC.…”

The Prognostic Role of Programmed Death‐Ligand 1 in Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma

“…Eleven studies published from 2014 to 2018 were included in the meta-analysis (Table I). 4,[9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18] The total number of participants was 1,356; sample sizes ranged from 56 to 209. Most studies were retrospective (10/11).…”