ArticleBiomedicines2022
High Pretreatment Serum PD-L1 Levels Are Associated with Muscle Invasion and Shorter Survival in Upper Tract Urothelial Carcinoma.
Article in Biomedicines, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers.
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Who cites it
4 citing papers in PubMed, 3 citations in OpenAlex.
- New Advancements in Prognostic Biomarkers for Upper Tract Urothelial Carcinoma.Current medicinal chemistry · 2026Review
- Soluble immune checkpoint molecules in cancer risk, outcomes prediction, and therapeutic applications.Biomarker research · 2024Review
- Soluble immune checkpoints: implications for cancer prognosis and response to immune checkpoint therapy and conventional therapies.Journal of experimental & clinical cancer research : CR · 2024Review
- Advances in the Treatment of Kidney and Upper Urinary Tract Cancers.Biomedicines · 2024Article
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Authors and funding
17 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Programmed death ligand-1 (PD-L1) is an immune checkpoint molecule and a widely used therapeutic target in urothelial cancer. Its circulating, soluble levels (sPD-L1) were recently suggested to be associated with the presence and prognosis of various malignancies but have not yet been investigated in upper tract urothelial carcinoma (UTUC). In this study, we assessed sPD-L1 levels in 97 prospectively collected serum samples from 61 UTUC patients who underwent radical nephroureterectomy (RNU), chemotherapy (CTX), or immune checkpoint inhibitor (ICI) therapy. In addition to pretreatment samples, postoperative and on-treatment sPD-L1 levels were determined in some patients by using ELISA. In the RNU group, elevated preoperative sPD-L1 was associated with a higher tumor grade (p = 0.019), stage (p < 0.001) and the presence of metastasis (p = 0.002). High sPD-L1 levels were significantly associated with worse survival in both the RNU and CTX cohorts. sPD-L1 levels were significantly elevated in postoperative samples (p = 0.011), while they remained unchanged during CTX. Interestingly, ICI treatment caused a strong, 25-fold increase in sPD-L1 (p < 0.001). Our results suggest that elevated preoperative sPD-L1 level is a predictor of higher pathological tumor stage and worse survival in UTUC, which therefore may help to optimize therapeutic decision-making. The observed characteristic sPD-L1 flare during immune checkpoint inhibitor therapy may have clinical significance.
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