ArticleScientific reports2021
Decreased levels of circulating cytokines VEGF, TNF-β and IL-15 indicate PD-L1 overexpression in tumours of primary breast cancer patients.
Article in Scientific reports, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers.
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7 citing papers in PubMed, 7 citations in OpenAlex.
- Plasma proteomics-based liquid biopsy for predicting efficacy of PD-1-based immunochemotherapy in advanced gastric cancer: a prospective cohort study.Molecular biomedicine · 2026Article
- Harnessing pyroptosis in breast cancer therapy: immunological mechanisms and emerging biomaterial strategies.Cell death discovery · 2026Review
- Autophagy as a Target for Non-Immune Intrinsic Functions of Programmed Cell Death-Ligand 1 in Cancer.International journal of molecular sciences · 2023Review
- Epstein‑Barr virus as a promoter of tumorigenesis in the tumor microenvironment of breast cancer (Review).International journal of molecular medicine · 2023Review
- Evaluation of Serum Interleukin-15 in Acute Lymphoid and Myeloid Leukemia Patients.Archives of Razi Institute · 2022Article
- Exercise-induced IL-15 acted as a positive prognostic implication and tumor-suppressed role in pan-cancer.Frontiers in pharmacology · 2022Article
- Circular RNA-associated ceRNA network involved in HIF-1 signalling in triple-negative breast cancer: circ_0047303 as a potential key regulator.Journal of cellular and molecular medicine · 2021Article
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8 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
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No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Programmed death ligand 1 (PD-L1) overexpression has been associated with poor clinical outcomes in several human cancers whose increased malignant behaviour might be related to PD-L1 mediated systemic immunological tolerance. This study aims to verify if circulating cytokines may serve as a proxy for non-invasive identification of sensitive prognostic biomarkers reflecting tumour and its microenvironment. Immunohistochemistry was used to measure PD-L1 expression in tumour tissue sections of 148 chemonaïve breast cancer (BC) patients. The panel of 51 cytokines was analysed using multiplex bead arrays. High PD-L1 expression in tumours was associated with shorter progression-free survival (HR 3.25; 95% CI 1.39-7.61; P = 0.006) and low circulating levels of three multifunctional molecules; VEGF, TNF-β and IL-15 (P = 0.001). In multivariate analysis, patients with low VEGF had 4.6-fold increased risk of PD-L1 overexpression (P = 0.008), present in 76.5% of patients with all these three cytokines below the median (vs. 35.6% among the others; P = 0.002). The area under the curve value of 0.722 (95% CI 0.59-0.85; P = 0.004) shows that this combination of cytokines has a moderate ability to discriminate between PD-L1 high vs. PD-L1 low patients. Plasma cytokines, therefore, could serve as potential non-invasive biomarkers for the identification of high-risk BC cases.
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