The immunohistochemistry (IHC) was performed to evaluate the associations between the expression level of CD164 and clinical-pathological features of patients, and IHC was used to analyze the relationship between CD164 and CXCR4 in tumor tissues.
To further characterize CD164 as a potential biomarker for malignant CD4<sup>+</sup> T cells, CD164<sup>+</sup> and CD164<sup>-</sup>CD4<sup>+</sup> T cells isolated from patients with high-circulating tumor burden, B2 stage, and medium/low tumor burden, B1-B0 stage, were assessed for the expression of genes reported to differentiate SS from normal controls, and associated with malignancy and poor prognosis.
In conclusion, we have provided evidence that CD164 promotes the growth of lung tumor-initiating cells with stem cell properties and induces tumor growth and drug resistance through Akt/mTOR signaling.
Our results suggest that CD164 can serve as a marker for diagnosis and for monitoring progression of cutaneous T-cell lymphoma (CTCL)/SS and that FCRL3 expression correlates with a high circulating tumor burden.
The clinicopathological correlation analysis showed that the upregulation of CD164 protein was significantly associated with tumor grade and metastasis.