The number of tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes is functionally important and correlates with clinical outcome in several tumor entities.
Herein we explore the impact of the density of T and B lymphocytes in prostate cancer tissue on prostate-specific antigen (PSA) recurrence after prostatectomy in 3261 prostate cancer tissue samples. The number of prostate cancer-infiltrating CD3-positive T cells and CD20-positive B cells per tissue spot in a tissue microarray format was determined by immunohistochemistry and was correlated with clinical and pathological data from the same patient cohort. Patients with very low and very high numbers of CD3-positive T cells per tissue spot had a significantly shorter PSA recurrence-free survival compared to patients with intermediate numbers of T cells (p = 0.0188). Furthermore, a high number of CD3-positive T cells per tissue spot was associated with fusion type prostate cancer identified by ERG expression analysis. The number of CD20-positive B cells per tissue spot was not associated with other clinical and histopathological parameters. This study indicates that the density of T but not B cells plays a functional role in the biology of prostate cancer and may have an impact on clinical outcome in this frequent neoplasia.
Written by:
Flammiger A, Bayer F, Cirugeda-Kühnert A, Huland H, Tennstedt P, Simon R, Minner S, Bokemeyer C, Sauter G, Schlomm T, Trepel M. Are you the author?
Departments of Oncology and Hematology, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Hubertus Wald Tumorzentrum (University Cancer Center Hamburg), Hamburg, Germany.
Reference: APMIS. 2012 Nov;120(11):901-8.
doi: 10.1111/j.1600-0463.2012.02924.x
PubMed Abstract
PMID: 23009114
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