TY  - JOUR
A1  - Martin, Daniel
A1  - Rödel, Franz
A1  - Winkelmann, Anne Ria
A1  - Balermpas, Panagiotis
A1  - Rödel, Claus
A1  - Fokas, Emmanouil
T1  - Peripheral leukocytosis is inversely correlated with intratumoral CD8+ t-cell infiltration and associated with worse outcome after chemoradiotherapy in anal cancer
T2  - Frontiers in immunology
N2  - Peripheral blood leukocytosis has been implicated in promoting tumor progression leading to worse survival, but the mechanisms behind this phenomenon remain unexplored. Here, we examined the prognostic role of pretreatment white blood cell (WBC) count and clinicopathologic parameters in the context of CD8+ tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TIL) and myeloperoxidase+ tumor-associated neutrophils (TANs) in patients with anal squamous cell carcinoma (ASCC) treated with definitive chemoradiotherapy (CRT). After a median follow-up of 26 months, leukocytosis correlated with advanced T-stage (p < 0.001) and N-stage (p < 0.001), and predicted for worse distant-metastasis-free survival (p = 0.006), disease-free-survival (DFS, p = 0.029), and overall survival (p = 0.013). Importantly, leukocytosis was associated with a lower intraepithelial CD8+ TIL density (p = 0.014), whereas low CD8+ TIL expression in the intraepithelial compartment was associated with worse DFS (p = 0.028). Additionally, high TAN expression in the peritumoral compartment was associated with a significantly lower density of CD8+ TIL (p = 0.039), albeit, TAN expression lacked prognostic value. In conclusion, leukocytosis constitutes an important prognostic marker in ASCC patients treated with CRT. In conjunction with intratumoral TIL and TAN, these data provide for the first time important insight on the correlation of peripheral blood leukocytosis with the intratumoral immune contexture and could be relevant for future patient stratification using immunotherapies in ASCC.
KW  - anal cancer
KW  - leukocytosis
KW  - immune microenvironment
KW  - tumor-infiltrating-lymphocytes
KW  - neutrophils
KW  - CD8
KW  - myeloperoxidase
Y1  - 2017
UR  - http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/51843
UR  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-518438
SN  - 1664-3224
N1  - Copyright: © 2017 Martin, Rödel, Winkelmann, Balermpas, Rödel and Fokas. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
VL  - 8
IS  - Art. 1225
SP  - 1
EP  - 10
PB  - Frontiers Media
CY  - Lausanne
ER  -