Chen Lujun, Xie Quanqin, Wang Zhigang, Shi Liangrong, Wu Changping, Jiang Jingting
Department of Tumor Biological Treatment, The Third Affiliated Hospital of Soochow University, Changzhou, Jiangsu 213003, China.
Research Center for Cancer Immunotherapy Technology of Jiangsu Province, The Third Affiliated Hospital of Soochow University, Changzhou, Jiangsu 213003, China.
Oncotarget. 2016 Nov 22;7(47):77237-77243. doi: 10.18632/oncotarget.12628.
The co-stimulatory ligands of B7-family have been confirmed to play an important role in negatively regulating the T-cell mediated anti-tumor immunity. In addition, these inhibitory molecules are also aberrantly expressed on various human cancers tissues, and significantly associated with cancer progression and patients' poor prognoses. We have previously reported that B7-H3 and B7-H4 ligands are highly expressed in human esophageal cancer tissues. Herein, we tried to further analyze the value of their combined expression on prognostic prediction for esophageal cancer patients. We found that the combined expression of both B7-H3 and B7-H4 could be used as a valuable risk factor for predicting the prognosis of esophageal cancer patients (P=0.003). Moreover the status of these patients with high expression of both B7-H3 and B7-H4, was positively and significantly associated with the tumor invasion depth (P=0.0414) and TNM stage (P=0.0414). The Cox multivariate proportional hazards regression analysis revealed that the tumor size (P=0.007), the TNM stage (P=0.024) and the status of both B7-H3 and B7-H4 high expression (P=0.011), could be used as an independent risk factor for predicting patients' postoperative prognosis, respectively. In conclusion, our data indicated that the combined application of B7-H3 and B7-H4 expression can be effectively used as a prognostic marker in esophageal cancer patients.
B7家族的共刺激配体已被证实对负向调节T细胞介导的抗肿瘤免疫发挥重要作用。此外，这些抑制性分子在各种人类癌症组织中也异常表达，且与癌症进展及患者的不良预后显著相关。我们之前报道过B7-H3和B7-H4配体在人类食管癌组织中高表达。在此，我们试图进一步分析它们的联合表达对食管癌患者预后预测的价值。我们发现B7-H3和B7-H4的联合表达可作为预测食管癌患者预后的一个有价值的风险因素（P = 0.003）。此外，B7-H3和B7-H4均高表达的患者状态与肿瘤浸润深度（P = 0.0414）和TNM分期（P = 0.0414）呈正相关且具有显著性意义。Cox多因素比例风险回归分析显示，肿瘤大小（P = 0.007）、TNM分期（P = 0.024）以及B7-H3和B7-H4均高表达的状态（P = 0.011），分别可作为预测患者术后预后的独立风险因素。总之，我们的数据表明B7-H3和B7-H4表达的联合应用可有效用作食管癌患者的预后标志物。
