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. 2017 Sep 15;8(16):3166-3172.
doi: 10.7150/jca.19060. eCollection 2017.

Programmed Death Ligand 1 (PD-L1) Expression in Primary Angiosarcoma

Gerardo Botti  1 , Giosuè Scognamiglio  1 , Laura Marra  1 , Antonio Pizzolorusso  2 , Maurizio Di Bonito  1 , Rossella De Cecio  1 , Monica Cantile  1 , Annarosaria De Chiara  1
Affiliations

Programmed Death Ligand 1 (PD-L1) Expression in Primary Angiosarcoma

Gerardo Botti et al. J Cancer. .

Abstract

Angiosarcomas are rare malignant endothelial-cell tumors of vascular or lymphatic origin, and are among the most aggressive subtypes of soft-tissue sarcomas. The prognosis is poor and treatment is challenging in many cases. PD-1/PD-L1 pathway plays a critical role in immune escape of tumor cells. Recent studies described that PD-L1 is widely expressed in various types of cancer, providing the basis for the development of PD1/PD-L1 antibodies as anti-cancer immunotherapy. Despite the well-known potential of PD-L1 as prognostic and predictive biomarker, only few studies described its IHC expression in cancer subtypes for the extreme difficulty in developing standard protocol with the different antibody clones available. We analyzed the IHC expression of PD-L1 on a series of angiosarcomas at different body location, showing its aberrant expression in about 66% of samples with no relation with prognosis. Our study allowed us to correctly define PD-L1 staining in angiosarcoma tumor tissues with final purpose to stratify patients for immune checkpoint inhibitors therapies.

Keywords: IHC evaluation.; PD-L1; angiosarcoma.

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Conflict of interest statement

Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interest exists.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
PD-L1 immunostaining in angiosarcoma: a) incomplete immunoreactivity of membrane (20X); b) detail of incomplete immunoreactivity of membrane (40X); c) complete immunoreactivity of membrane (20X); d) detail of complete immunoreactivity of membrane (40X); e) immunoreactivity of membrane with cytoplasmic positivity (20X); f) detail of immunoreactivity of membrane with cytoplasmic positivity (40X).
Figure 2
Figure 2
PD-L1 immunostaining in immune cells within angiosarcoma samples (20X).
Figure 3
Figure 3
Angiosarcoma patients Kaplan-Meier curves: a) Disease Free Survival (DFS) (p=0, 118); b) Overall Survival (OS) (p=0,726).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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