A common feature of Epstein Barr Virus-positive NPC is the dense infiltration of lymphocytes in the tumor stroma and positive PD-L1 expression in tumor cells, making it an attractive target for immunotherapy, especially immune checkpoint inhibitors.
In a sensitivity analysis, higher PD-L1 expression correlated with better progression-free survival (<i>P</i> = 0.043), and was associated with better overall survival in Caucasian subjects (<i>P</i> = 0.02), nasopharyngeal carcinoma patients (<i>P</i> = 0.015), and studies with small sample sizes (<i>P</i> = 0.001).PD-1 had no prognostic significance.
The purpose of this study was to evaluate the expression and localization of CD8, FoxP3, PD-1, and PD-L1 in primary tumor tissues and their effects on prognosis of stage IV M0 locally advanced nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) patients.
We show for the first time that low PD-L1 expression on ICs and TCs strongly correlates with local recurrence in EBV-positive NPC patients after radiation-based therapy.
Our results suggest that PD-L1 expression on tumor cells in combination with CD8-positive TIL density could be a useful predictive biomarker for risk stratification in patients with NPC.
This study evaluated PD-L1 and CD8 expression levels and the respective associations with clinical and histopathological characteristics of patients with NPC.
We observed that advanced rT classification and anemia status before salvage treatment was associated with high level of PD-L1 in recurrent NPC patients, and PD-L1 and was co-located with HIF-1α in recurrent tumors by immunofluorescence analysis.
This study systematically evaluated the expression of PD-L1, spatial distribution of CD3<sup>+</sup> immune cells and the relationship of both factors to survival in nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) patients.
Safety and Antitumor Activity of Pembrolizumab in Patients With Programmed Death-Ligand 1-Positive Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma: Results of the KEYNOTE-028 Study.