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. 2018 Mar 21;18(1):313.
doi: 10.1186/s12885-018-4220-1.

Tumor-infiltrating mast cells predict prognosis and gemcitabine-based adjuvant chemotherapeutic benefit in biliary tract cancer patients

Xiaobo Bo  1 , Jie Wang  1 , Tao Suo  1 , Xiaoling Ni  1 , Han Liu  1 , Sheng Shen  1 , Min Li  1 , Yueqi Wang  2 , Houbao Liu  3 , Jiejie Xu  4
Affiliations

Tumor-infiltrating mast cells predict prognosis and gemcitabine-based adjuvant chemotherapeutic benefit in biliary tract cancer patients

Xiaobo Bo et al. BMC Cancer. .

Abstract

Background: Recent studies have reported TIMs play an important role in tumors progression or regression, but the effect of TIMs in biliary tract cancer remains unclear. The aim of this study is to investigate the prognostic value of tumor infiltrating mast cells (TIMs) and its influence on gemcitabine-based adjuvant chemotherapy (ACT) benefits in biliary tract cancer patients after surgery.

Methods: TIMs were evaluated by immunohistochemical staining of tryptase in 250 patients with resected gallbladder carcinoma (GBC) or extrahepatic bile duct carcinoma (EBDC) from Zhongshan Hospital. The relationships between TIMs and clinicopathological factors and postoperative prognosis were analyzed respectively.

Results: High TIMs infiltration was significantly correlated with prolonged overall survival (OS). Furthermore, multivariate analysis indicated TNM stage and TIMs as independent prognostic factors for OS. Patients with high TIMs infiltration appeared to significantly benefit from Gemcitabine-based ACT in the discovery and validation cohorts. Spearman analysis identified that TIMs infiltration were positively correlated with anti-tumor CD8+ T cells.

Conclusion: TIMs infiltration is an independent favorable prognostic factor in GBC and EBDC patients, which could better stratify patients with different prognosis and predict benefit from gemcitabine-based ACT.

Keywords: Adjuvant chemotherapy; Biliary tract cancer; Mast cells; Overall survival; Surgery.

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Conflict of interest statement

Ethics approval and consent to participate

The study was approved by Fudan university, Zhongshan hospital research medical ethics committee (B2014–029). All specimens were obtained from patients with written informed consent.

Consent for publication

Not applicable.

Competing interests

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

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Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Representative images of tumor infiltrated mast cells (TIMs) staining in BTC. (a) Low TIMs infiltration. (b) High TIMs infiltration. Scale bar: 200 μm (original magnification × 400). (c, d) Kaplan-Meier analysis of overall survival in the discovery set and validation set. P value was calculated by log-rank test
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Association between TIMs infiltration and benefit from gemcitabine-based adjuvant chemotherapy (ACT). (a) Patients without ACT in the discovery set. (b) Patients with ACT in the discovery set. (c) Patients without ACT in the validation set. (d) Patients with ACT in the validation set. P value was calculated by log-rank test
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
The relationships between TIMs and CD8+ T cells in BTC patients. (a-d) serial sections from GBC and EBDC samples immunohistochemically stained for TIMs and CD8+ T cells. Scale bar: 200 μm (original magnification 200×). (e, f) Spearman’s correlation for TIMs and CD8+ T cells in the discovery set and validation set
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