Department of Medicine, Surgery and Dentistry "Scuola Medica Salernitana", University of Salerno, Baronissi, Italy.
Oncology Unit, San Giovanni di Dio e Ruggi D'Aragona University Hospital, Salerno, Italy.
Front Immunol. 2020 Sep 29;11:561390. doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2020.561390. eCollection 2020.
Thin melanomas are tumors less than 1 mm thick according to Breslow classification. Their prognosis is in most cases excellent. However, a small subset of these tumors relapses. These clinical findings emphasize the need of novel prognostic biomarkers to identify this subset of tumors. Characterization of tumor immune microenvironment (TIME) is currently investigated as a prognostic and predictive biomarker for cancer immunotherapy in several solid tumors including melanoma. Here, taking into account the limited availability of tumor tissues, by characterizing some of the characteristics of TIME such as number of infiltrating lymphocytes, HLA class I antigen and PD-L1 expression, we show that number of infiltrating CD8+ and FOXP3+ T cells as well as CD8+/FOXP3+ T cell ratio can represent a useful prognostic biomarker in thin melanoma. Although further investigations in a larger patient cohort are needed, these findings have potential clinical significance since they can be used to define subgroups of thin melanoma patients who have a worse prognosis and might need different treatment modalities.
薄型黑素瘤是根据 Breslow 分类，厚度小于 1mm 的肿瘤。它们的预后在大多数情况下是良好的。然而，一小部分肿瘤会复发。这些临床发现强调需要新的预后生物标志物来识别这部分肿瘤。肿瘤免疫微环境（TIME）的特征目前正在作为几种实体瘤（包括黑色素瘤）癌症免疫治疗的预后和预测生物标志物进行研究。在这里，考虑到肿瘤组织的有限可用性，通过描述 TIME 的一些特征，如浸润淋巴细胞的数量、HLA Ⅰ类抗原和 PD-L1 的表达，我们表明浸润性 CD8+和 FOXP3+T 细胞的数量以及 CD8+/FOXP3+T 细胞的比例可以作为薄型黑素瘤的有用预后生物标志物。尽管需要在更大的患者队列中进行进一步的研究，但这些发现具有潜在的临床意义，因为它们可以用于定义预后较差且可能需要不同治疗方式的薄型黑素瘤患者亚组。
