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. 2015 Sep 1;8(9):11084-91.
eCollection 2015.

Programmed cell death ligand 1 (PD-L1) expression on gastric cancer and its relationship with clinicopathologic factors

Lin Zhang  1 , Miaozhen Qiu  2 , Ying Jin  3 , Jiao Ji  4 , Baoxia Li  4 , Xueping Wang  1 , Shumei Yan  5 , Ruihua Xu  3 , Dajun Yang  4
Affiliations

Programmed cell death ligand 1 (PD-L1) expression on gastric cancer and its relationship with clinicopathologic factors

Lin Zhang et al. Int J Clin Exp Pathol. .

Abstract

Background: Targeting the immune checkpoints in solid tumors becomes hot recently. Programmed cell death ligand 1 (PD-L1) is ligand for programmed death 1 (PD-1), which is known to negatively regulate T-cell activation. In the present study, we investigated the expression of PD-L1 in tumor specimens of gastric cancer and its relationships with clinicopathological variables and survival.

Methods: The expression of PD-L1 in 132 surgically resected specimens of stage II and III gastric cancer was evaluated by immunohistochemistry in microarray tissue.

Results: Expression of PD-L1 was observed in 50.8% (67/132) of gastric cancer tumor specimens. Patients whose tumor size over 5cm had a higher positive rate of PD-L1 expression. There was no relationship between the expression of PD-L1 and other clinicopathological variables including age, gender, clinical stage, location as well as histological differentiation. PD-L1 positive patients had significantly poorer survival than negative patients. The 5-year survival rates was 83.1% in those with PD-L1 negative patients and 50.7% for PD-L1 positive patients (P<0.001). The multivariate analysis indicated that both PD-L1 positive and Tumor-node-metastasis stage were independent prognostic factors in gastric cancer patients (P=0.001 and 0.025, respectively).

Conclusions: The expression of PD-L1 was found in half of stages II and III gastric cancer patients. Positive of PD-L1 expression indicated poor survival in Chinese stages II and III gastric adenocarcinoma patients. These results may provide the clue for immunotherapy in the adjuvant treatment setting of gastric cancer patients.

Keywords: Clinicopathologic features; PD-L1; gastric cancer; prognosis.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
The expression of PD-L1 in gastric adenocarcinoma tissues by IHC. (A) Negative expression of PD-L1 protein (100×). (B) Weak expression of PD-L1 protein (100×), (C) Moderate expression of PD-L1 protein (100×), (D) Intense expression of PD-L1 protein (100×). (E-H) demonstrate the higher magnification (400×) from the area of the box in (A-D), respectively.
Figure 2
Figure 2
The overall survival of the whole population.
Figure 3
Figure 3
The survival of gastric cancer patients according to the expression of PD-L1.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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