The Preliminary Investigation On The Expression And Clinical Significance Of TIGIT In Human Primary Breast Cancer

Objective:The aim of this study to investigate the correlation between the expression of TIGIT and expressions of CD24,HER-2,ER,PR,clinical grades,or pathological features of primary breast cancer(PBC),which can provide clinical and experimental basis for the evaluation of immune status and immunotherapy of PBC.Methods:1.Anticoagulant blood samples were collected from PBC patients admitted to the Department of Thyroid and Breast Surgery of Taizhou People’s Hospital,including 56received sample collection before surgery and 12 received sample collection after surgery.The anticoagulant blood samples from 34 healthy women volunteers were used as negative control.The percentage of TIGIT expression on CD3~+T cells in peripheral blood of the patients and healthy controls were detected by using flow cytometry,followed by analyzing its clinical significance.2.Fifty-six cancer samples and thirty-four adjacent tissues were obtained from 56PBC patients,and the expression of TIGIT and CD24 was detected by immunohistochemical technique(IHC).Then we analyzed the correlation between expression of TIGIT and CD24 in PBC tissues.3.The complete clinical and pathological data of patients were collected from each patient,including age,tumor size,lymph node metastasis,tumor pathological classification,clinicopathological grade,and the expression of ER,PR,and HER-2.The correlation between TIGIT expression and clinicopathological features in PBC was further analyzed.Results:1.Compared to the healthy negative controls,the expression of TIGIT in CD3~+T lymphocytes from peripheral blood of PBC patients showed significant increase in the PBC patients before surgery(P<0.0001),while significant decrease was seen in its expression after surgery.ROC curve analysis indicated that the cutoff value of TIGIT~+CD3~+T cells in peripheral blood of breast cancer was 23.38%.The corresponding sensitivity and specificity were 94.12%and 69.64%,respectively.2.IHC indicated that the expression of TIGIT and CD24 was higher in cancer tissues than that in adjacent tissues in terms of integrated optical density(IOD)and cumulative positive area(P<0.0001).TIGIT was positively correlated with CD24.TIGIT was mainly expressed in cytoplasm,with slight expression in membrane of PBC cells.In contrast,there was no expression of TIGIT in nucleus of PBC cells.3.We analyzed the correlation between TIGIT expression and pathological types,grades as well as the expression of immunomarker molecules.The results indicated that the expression of TIGIT on CD3~+T cells was significantly higher in patients with age>58 years than in patients with age≤58 years(P<0.0001).Conclusions:The expression of TIGIT in peripheral blood T cells from PBC patients was higher than that in healthy control.The expression of TIGIT and CD24 in cancer tissues was significantly higher than that in adjacent tissues.