Abstract 92P
Background
Tumor tissue as well as regional lymph nodes are removed during curative surgery for early-stage non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). These tissues provide a snapshot of the patient's immune system at the time of surgery. We performed immune cell transcriptomics in matched tumor tissue, tumor bearing (tb) and non-tumor bearing (ntb) N1 as well as N2 lymph nodes (LNs) in patients with NSCLC and investigated their relation to survival.
Methods
Hospital databases were screened for surgically treated NSCLC patients for whom tumor tissue, tbLNs as well as N1 and N2 ntbLNs were available. Clinical as well as demographic data were extracted from hospital records. Expression profiling of 770 immune-related genes was performed using the PanCancer IO 360 panel by NanoString Technologies. We analyzed association between transciptomics data and overall survival (OS) and progression-free survival (PFS) using stepwise Cox regression.
Results
We identified 190 surgically treated patients in hospital databases. 16 of these patients fulfilled inclusion criteria and had sufficient archived tissue available. The Tumor Immune Dysfunction and Exclusion (TIDE) score in N1 and N2 tumor-free lymph nodes was associated with OS (p=0.009, HR=0.64) as well as PFS (p=0.026, HR=0.68). Of the 16 patients in this study, only four patients (25%) showed consistently positive or negative TIDE scores across all four examined tissues. Five patients (31%) showed discrepancies in only one tissue and the remaining seven (44%) patients showed two negative and two positive scores. Cytotoxic T-cells were the only cell type to differ between TIDE Low and TIDE High patients in more than one tissue.
Conclusions
TIDE scores in tumor and regional lymph nodes may indicate a dysfunctional immune status and can predict postoperative survival in NSCLC.
Legal entity responsible for the study
Medizinische Klinik V, University Hospital Munich.
Funding
Has not received any funding.
Disclosure
All authors have declared no conflicts of interest.