Evaluation of prognostic significance of granulocyte-related factors in cancer patients undergoing personalized peptide vaccination

Sakamoto Shinjiro

Yoshitomi Munehiro

Yutani Shigeru

Terazaki Yasuhiro

Yoshiyama Koichi

Ioji Tetsuya

Matsueda Satoko

Yamada Akira

Takamori Shinzo

Itoh Kyogo

Hattori Noboru

Kohno Nobuoki

Sasada Tetsuro

Human Vaccines & Immunotherapeutics

Since cancer vaccines do not always elicit beneficial effects in treated patients, identification of biomarkers for predicting clinical outcomes would be highly desirable. We previously reported that abnormal granulocytes present in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) may contribute to poor prognosis in advanced prostate cancer patients receiving personalized peptide vaccination (PPV). In the current study, we examined whether soluble factors derived from granulocytes, such as matrix metalloproteinase 9 (MMP-9), myeloperoxidase (MPO), and arginase 1 (ARG1), and inhibitory cytokine TGFβ in pre-vaccination plasma were useful for predicting prognosis after PPV in advanced cancer patients. In biliary tract cancer (n=25), multivariate Cox regression analysis demonstrated that patients with higher plasma MMP-9 levels had a significantly worse overall survival (OS) [hazard ratio (HR) = 4.637, 95% confidence interval (CI) = 1.670 - 12.877, P = 0.003], whereas MPO, ARG1, or TGFβ levels were not correlated with OS. Similarly, patients with higher MMP-9 levels showed worse prognosis than those with lower MMP-9 levels in other types of advanced cancers, including non-small cell lung cancer (n=32, P = 0.037 by log-rank test), and pancreatic cancer (n=41, P = 0.042 by log-rank test). Taken together, plasma MMP-9 levels before vaccination might be potentially useful as a biomarker for selecting advanced cancer patients who would benefit from PPV.

ARG1

biomarker

MMP-9

MPO

multivariate Cox regression analysis

personalized peptide vaccine

eng

Taylor & Francis Group, LLC

© Cancer Vaccine Center, Kurume University. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/), which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properlycited. Themoral rights of the named author(s) have been assertted.

[ISSN] 2164-5515

[ISSN] 2164-554X

[DOI] 10.1080/21645515.2015.1075107

[PMID] 26325075

[DOI] https://doi.org/10.1080/21645515.2015.1075107