Change of peripheral blood sPD-L1 during chemotherapy in patients with small cell lung cancer and its clinical significance / 中国肿瘤临床

ABSTRACT

Objective: In tumor microenvironment, immune-related mechanisms up-regulate the expression of programmed death li-gand 1 (PD-L1), which abnormally activates PD-L1 signaling pathway and mediates tumor immune escape. Soluble programmed death ligand 1 (sPD-L1) is a form of PD-L1. It has been confirmed that the expression of sPD-L1 in lung squamous cell carcinoma and adeno-carcinoma is related to disease progression, while small cell lung cancer (SCLC) has a high degree of malignancy, strong invasiveness and few related studies. The purpose of this study was to observe the changes in expression of sPD-L1 in the plasma of SCLC patients and their clinical significance. Methods: A total of 94 patients with SCLC diagnosed by pathological examination in Shanxi Provincial Cancer Hospital from March 2018 to November 2018 were selected as test group, and 17 healthy persons in the same period were se-lected as control group. The dynamic changes of plasma sPD-L1 were compared between the two groups, and the correlations among the expression of sPD-L1 and TNM stage, distant metastasis, and pro-gastrin-releasing peptide (ProGRP) was analyzed. Results: The lev-el of sPD-L1 in the test group was higher than that in the control group (P<0.05 and P<0.01, respectively). In patients with SCLC in the remission stage, the serum sPD-L1 level after chemotherapy was significantly lower than that before chemotherapy (P<0.01); in pa-tients with advanced stage, the serum sPD-L1 level after chemotherapy was significantly higher than that before chemotherapy (P<0.01). The abnormal high expression of sPD-L1 in SCLC patients was significantly correlated with the progression of the disease (P<0.05). The expression of sPD-L1 in serum was positively correlated with the tumor marker ProGRP. Conclusions: The expression of sPD-L1 in peripheral plasma of patients with SCLC is higher than that in healthy individuals and is closely related to the clinical effect.