ArticleESMO gastrointestinal oncology2025
PD-L1 expression as a negative predictive biomarker in advanced esophageal squamous-cell cancer treated with chemotherapy alone.
Article in ESMO gastrointestinal oncology, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
2 citing papers in PubMed.
- Expanding horizons in esophageal squamous cell carcinoma: The promise of induction chemoimmunotherapy with radiotherapy.World journal of clinical oncology · 2025Article
- Real-world clinical impact of first-line immune checkpoint inhibitor-based therapy in advanced esophageal squamous cell carcinoma.ESMO gastrointestinal oncology · 2025Article
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Authors and funding
8 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Background: Programmed death-ligand 1 (PD-L1) expression is a well-established positive predictive biomarker for response to immunotherapy in advanced esophageal squamous-cell carcinoma (aESCC). However, the association between PD-L1 and response to chemotherapy alone remains unclear. This study aims to determine the prognostic significance of PD-L1 expression in patients treated with first-line chemotherapy alone in aESCC. Materials and methods: First-line phase III randomized trials that included PD-L1 expression as a biomarker in aESCC were extracted after a systematic search. A graphical reconstructive algorithm was used to estimate time-to-event outcomes from reported Kaplan-Meier (KM) plots and, where unavailable, KMSubtraction was utilized to derive KM plots of unreported PD-L1 subgroups. Thereafter, an individual patient data meta-analysis was conducted. Survival analyses for overall survival (OS) and progression-free survival (PFS) were conducted with Cox proportional hazards models with a shared-frailty term incorporated to account for interstudy differences. Results: Chemotherapy arms from five randomized phase III trials-CheckMate-648, ESCORT-1st, KEYNOTE-590, RATIONALE-306 and ORIENT-15-comprising 1517 patients were included in the OS analysis. Compared with PD-L1-low-expressing tumors, patients with PD-L1-high-expressing tumors were at a significantly higher risk of mortality [hazard ratio (HR) 1.153, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.018-1.305, Conclusions: Our study found PD-L1 expression is a negative predictor of OS in aESCC treated with first-line chemotherapy.
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Registered trials
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