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Review
. 2019 Oct;68(10):1671-1680.
doi: 10.1007/s00262-019-02327-7. Epub 2019 Mar 23.

The role of immune infiltrates as prognostic biomarkers in patients with breast cancer

Constantin N Baxevanis  1 , Michael Sofopoulos  2 , Sotirios P Fortis  3 , Sonia A Perez  3
Affiliations
Review

The role of immune infiltrates as prognostic biomarkers in patients with breast cancer

Constantin N Baxevanis et al. Cancer Immunol Immunother. 2019 Oct.

Abstract

The presence of immune infiltrates in the tumor microenvironment has been documented in many types of cancer. Moreover, the preexistent or endogenous immunity which consists of interactions between intratumoral lymphocytes and tumor cells is mostly relevant for the successful application of various anticancer therapies, including standard chemotherapy, immune checkpoint inhibition-based immunotherapy and targeted therapies. The immunoscore defines densities of intratumoral immune infiltrates which determine poor or favorable prognosis depending on their quantity and quality in the tumor compartments. Results from large clinical studies have demonstrated an association between high densities of cytotoxic and memory TILs in the tumor compartments with improved prognosis. Importantly, we have demonstrated that differential combined densities of immune infiltrates jointly analyzed in the tumor center (TC) and the invasive margin (IM) have a significant prognostic value in breast cancer patients with poor clinicopathological parameters.

Keywords: Biomarkers; Breast cancer; CD163+ cells; CD8+ T cells; TILs; TIMO XIV.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
A Schematic representation of intratumoral FCIS and UCIS. The former is characterized by high CD8+ cell densities and low CD163+ ones within the TC combined with inverse densities for the same subsets in the IM. Mechanistically this could be explained via chemical gradients consisting of chemokines released by the tumor cells which attract CD8+ cells into the TC leaving only sparse CD8+ cells in the IM. In contrast, CD163+ cells are not affected by such gradients thus remaining in the IM and allowing the CD8+ cells in the TC to develop efficient antitumor reactivity resulting in improved clinical outcomes. In the UCIS the intratumoral cellular densities are inverse (i.e., low CD8+ and high CD163+ cell densities in the TC combined with high CD8+ and low CD163+ cell densities in the IM) which may be explained by different chemokine gradients through different tumor-released chemokine patterns
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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