Expression Of CD137/CD137L In Esophageal Cancer And Its Correlation With Prognosis

BackgroundEsophageal cancer is a common gastrointestinal malignancy tumor in China,the incidence rate accounted for the fourth in all tumors.Despite a variety of treatment strategies,but its 5-year survival rate is still below 40%,the new treatment urgently need further research and development.In recent years,studies from mechanisms of tumor-associated costimulatory molecules and tumor immunity have shown that the development of targeted co-stimulatory molecular targeted immunotherapy is a new promising therapeutic direction for tumor ttreatment。The study found that the use of specific co-stimulatory molecules of the two-way conduction signal to adjust the body’s anti-tumor immune response,can achieve anti-tumor effect.CD137/CD137 L is another important costimulatory molecule following PD-1/PD-L1.CD137 molecules are highly expressed with a variety of tumor vessel walls and closely related to tumor progression.Its ligand CD137 L is expressed in a variety of tumor cell surfaces and it’s associated with tumor progression and prognosis.However,CD137/CD137 L expression in esophageal cancer is rarely reported in the literature,In this study,immunohistochemistry and flow cytometry were used to detect the expression of CD137 and CD137 L in esophageal carcinoma tissues,peripheral blood and corresponding adjacent tissues,analyze its relationship with clinical pathological features,to explore the correlation of both expressed in esophageal cancer and it’s relationship with prognosis.ObjectiveTo explore the expression of CD137/CD137 L in esophageal carcinoma and the expression of CD3+CD137 + cells in peripheral blood,and analyze its significance of the expression of CD137/CD137 L in esophageal carcinoma,and its relationship with prognosis.MethodsImmunohistochemical method was used to detect the expression of CD137 / CD137 L in 87 cases of esophageal carcinoma and its corresponding adjacent tissues。The expression of CD3+CD137+ cells in peripheral blood of patients with esophageal cancer was detected by flow cytometry.Pathological data were completely collected.Then we analysed statistically the correlation among them with clinic-pathological such as gender,tumor size,differentiation degree,depth of invasion,lymph node metastasis and clinical stage,and to explore it’s relationship with prognosis.SPSS13.0 statistical software was used for statistical analysis.The count data were analyzed by χ2 test or Fisher’s exact test.The correlation was analyzed by Spearman rank correlation analysis.The prognostic analysis was performed using the Kaplan-Meier method.The experimental data were expressed as ?x ± s,and the t-test was used to compare the mean values between groups.The test level is α=0.05.The difference was statistically significant by P <0.05.Results1.There was no significant positive expression of CD137 in Esophageal cancer cells,but there were 32 cases show CD137 positive in the all 87 cases of esophageal cancer interstitial tissue,the positive rate was 36.8%;in corresponding adjacent tissue there were 63 cases show CD137 positive,the positive rate was 72.4 %(P <0.05).The positive expression rate was not correlated with gender,sex,tumor location,differentiation and clinical stage(P> 0.05),but correlated with the depth of invasion(P <0.05).2.There were 50 cases show CD137 L positive in 87 cases of esophageal carcinoma,the positive rate was 57.6%,which was significantly lower than that in the corresponding adjacent tissues 96.6%,There was significant difference between the two groups(P <0.05).but there was no significant correlation between the expression rate and the gender,sex,tumor location,differentiation and depth of infiltration(P> 0.05).But its significant correlation with clinical stage(P <0.05).3.The expression of CD137 was not associated with the prognosis of patients with esophageal cancer(P=0.6301);but the expression of CD137 L expression was significant associated with prognosis in patients with esophageal cancer(P=0.0368).4.The number of CD3+CD137+cells in peripheral blood of patients with esophageal carcinoma was correlated with pathological stage and lymph node metastasis(P <0.05),but it’s not correlated with histological differentiation(P> 0.05).ConclusionThe expression of CD137 L was the independent risk factors of esophageal cancer.The expression of CD137/CD137 L may play an important role in the antitumor immunity of esophageal cancer.