TY  - JOUR
A1  - Löser, Heike
A1  - Krämer, Max
A1  - Gebauer, Florian
A1  - Bruns, Christiane
A1  - Schröder, Wolfgang
A1  - Zander, Thomas
A1  - Persa, Oana-Diana
A1  - Alakus, Hakan
A1  - Hölscher, Arnulf H.
A1  - Büttner, Reinhard
A1  - Lohneis, Philipp
A1  - Quaas, Alexander
T1  - The expression of the immune checkpoint regulator VISTA correlates with improved overall survival in pT1/2 tumor stages in esophageal adenocarcinoma
T2  - OncoImmunology
N2  - Immune checkpoint modulation in cancer has been demonstrated as a high-value therapeutic strategy in many tumor entities. VISTA is an immune checkpoint receptor regulating T-cell function. To the best of our knowledge, nothing is known about the expression and prognostic impact of VISTA on tumor infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) in the tumor microenvironment of esophageal adenocarcinoma (EAC). We analyzed in total 393 EACs within a test-cohort (n = 165) and a validation-cohort (n = 228) using a monoclonal antibody (clone D1L2G). These data were statistically correlated with clinical as well as molecular data. 22.2% of the tumor cohort presented with a VISTA expression on TILs. These patients demonstrated an improved median overall survival compared to patients without VISTA expression (202.2 months vs. 21.6 months; p < 0.0001). The favorable outcome of VISTA positive tumors is significant in the entire cohort but mainly driven by the general better prognosis of T1/T2 tumors. However, in the pT1/2 group, VISTA positive tumors show a tremendous survival benefit compared to VISTA negative tumors revealing real long-term survivors in this particular subgroup. The survival difference is independent of the T-stage. This unique characteristic could influence neoadjuvant therapy concepts for EAC, since a profit of therapy could be reduced in the already favorable subgroup of VISTA positive tumors. VISTA emerges as a prognostic biomarker for long-term survival especially in the group of early TNM-stages. Future studies have to show the relevance of VISTA positive TILs within a tumor concerning response to specific immune checkpoint inhibition.
KW  - Esophageal adenocarcinoma
KW  - VISTA
KW  - TILs
KW  - early tumor stages
KW  - prognosis
Y1  - 2019
UR  - http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/50268
UR  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-502688
SN  - 2162-402X
SN  - 2162-4011
N1  - © 2019 The Author(s). Published with license by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.
VL  - 8
IS  - 5, e1581546
SP  - e1581546-1
EP  - e1581546-8
PB  - Taylor & Franics
CY  - Abingdon
ER  -