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Reviving up dendritic cells can run cancer immune wheel in non-small cell lung cancer: a prospective two-arm study

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Abstract

Background and aim

Lung cancer is the number one cause of cancer-related deaths. Dendritic cells (DCs) are heterogeneous components of innate immunity that play a crucial role in the anti-tumor T cell immunity and may represent a promising approach for tumor immunotherapy. In this study, we aimed to evaluate the frequency of the two major subsets of DCs; plasmacytoid dendritic cells (pDCs) and monocytic dendritic cells (mDCs) in non-small cell lung cancer (NCSLC) and correlating them with different clinicopathologic features and survival outcomes.

Patients and methods

This study was a case-controlled one, included 50 patients with denovo pathologically confirmed NSCLC and 20 healthy controls of comparable age and gender. After diagnosis and staging of patients, the frequency of DCs was evaluated using flow cytometry.

Results

We unveiled significantly reduced levels of pDCs (P = 0.024), and mDCs (P = 0.013) in NSCLC patients compared to controls. Furthermore, there was a significant accumulation of pDCs in non-metastatic patients compared to metastatic ones (P < 0.0001), while there was no significant (P = 0.6) differences in mDCs, and mDCs/pDCs ratio (P = 0.9). There was a Significant negative correlation (r = − 0.3, P = 0.04) between OS and mDCs. On the other hand, there was a significantly higher OS with pDCs ≥ 0.82 compared to patients with pDCs < 0.82, log rank Ch2 = 12.128, P < 0.0001.

Conclusion

Despite the controversy about the prognostic role of pDCs not only in NSCLC but also in other solid tumors, our study sheds light on the possible prognostic impact of pDCs and mDCs on treatment outcomes of NSCLC patients.

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Data availability

Data are available whenever requested

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Funding

The authors declare that they did not receive any grant from their university or other funding agency

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Clinical Pathology Department, South Egypt Cancer Institute, Assiut University, Assiut, 71515, Egypt

    Asmaa M. Zahran & Shimaa Mansour

  2. Department of Medical Microbiology and Immunology, Faculty of Medicine, Assiut University, Assiut, 71515, Egypt

    Helal F. Hetta

  3. Department of Internal Medicine, University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, Cincinnati, OH, 45267-0595, USA

    Helal F. Hetta

  4. Clinical Oncology Department, Faculty of Medicine, Assiut University, Assiut, 71515, Egypt

    Ereny S. Saad & Amal Rayan

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  1. Asmaa M. Zahran
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  2. Helal F. Hetta
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Contributions

AMZ, HFH, AR and ESS conceived and designed the experiments. AR, ESS and recruited patients, carried out the clinical investigations and collected patient’s clinical data. AMZ, HFH and SM performed the experiments. AMZ, HFH and SM shared in the analysis of the flow cytometry data. AR performed the statistical analysis. AR and AMZ accomplished the interpretation of results and wrote the initial draft. All authors participated in critical review and revision of the final manuscript. HFH is the corresponding author and managed the submission of the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Helal F. Hetta.

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Zahran, A.M., Hetta, H.F., Mansour, S. et al. Reviving up dendritic cells can run cancer immune wheel in non-small cell lung cancer: a prospective two-arm study. Cancer Immunol Immunother 70, 733–742 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00262-020-02704-7

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