Characterization of soluble PD-L1 in pleural effusions of mesothelioma patients: potential implications in the immune response and prognosis

Journal of Cancer Research and Clinical Oncology 2020 November 20 [Link]

Roberta Carosio, Vincenzo Fontana, Luca Mastracci, Paola Ferro, Federica Grillo, Barbara Banelli, Pier Aldo Canessa, Paolo Dessanti, Antonella Vigani, Anna Morabito, Ulrich Pfeffer, Alessandro Poggi, Silvio Roncella, Maria Pia Pistillo

Abstract

Purpose: Programmed death-ligand 1 (PD-L1) protein plays a central role in the antitumor immune response, and appears to be a predictor of prognosis and efficacy for PD-L1 and programmed death 1 (PD-1) blockade therapy. The immunoregulatory role and prognostic impact of PD-L1 soluble form (sPD-L1) have been investigated in biological fluids of patients with different tumors. In malignant pleural mesothelioma (MPM), circulating sPD-L1 has been recently reported in patients’ sera, but no data are available in pleural effusions (PE). In our study, we evaluated the baseline expression levels of sPD-L1 in PE from 84 MPM patients and correlated them with PD-L1-status in matched tumors and patients’ overall survival (OS).

Methods: sPD-L1 in PE was determined by ELISA and tumor PD-L1 by immunohistochemistry. Association of sPD-L1 with OS was estimated using the Cox regression model.

Results: We observed that sPD-L1 was variably expressed in all the PE and tended to be higher (by 30%) in patients with PD-L1-positive tumors (cut-off ≥ 1% stained cells) as compared to patients with PD-L1-negative tumors (geometric mean ratio = 1.28, P value = 0.288). sPD-L1 levels were significantly higher than those of sPD-1 (P value = 0.001) regardless of the MPM histotypes and they were positively correlated (r = 0.50, P value < 0.001). Moreover, high PE sPD-L1 concentrations were associated with a trend towards increased OS (hazard ratio 0.79, 95% CL 0.62-1.01, P value = 0.062).

Conclusions: Our study documents the presence of sPD-L1 in PE of MPM patients, and suggests its possible biological and prognostic role in MPM.