Lymphocyte subpopulation and dendritic cell phenotyping during antineoplastic therapy in human solid tumors

Abstract

Patients with cancer show variable levels of immunosuppression at the time of the presentation, and cytotoxic antineoplastic therapy is the primary contributor to the clinical immunodeficiency often observed during the course of the disease. In both hematological and solid tumors, this phenomenon is primarily related to the T-cell depletion associated with inhibition of dendritic cell ability to induce both primary and secondary T- and B-cell responses. Complete restoration of immunocompetence following antineoplastic therapy implicates the progressive recovery of various cell subpopulations, and it is a complex process that also depends on the type, the dose, the scheduling, and the associations of the employed drugs. In the era of target therapies, several antiangiogenic drugs are increasingly used in combination with standard chemotherapy in the treatment of advanced solid tumors. Their clinical efficacy has been recently related not only to the specific antiangiogenic properties but also to an indirect hypothetical effect on the host immune system. In the present work, we have reviewed the most recent information regarding (1) the capacity of standard antineoplastic therapy to induce and maintain an immunodeficiency in patients with solid tumors and (2) the influence of the antiangiogenic treatment in association with standard chemotherapy on lymphocyte and dendritic cell subsets and the possible resulting additional antitumor mechanism.

The neutrophil-to-lymphocyte and platelet-to-lymphocyte ratios predict efficacy of platinum-based chemotherapy in patients with metastatic triple negative breast cancer

“…Studies conducted in recent years have revealed a previously unrecognized complexity of the number and functional status of different immune system subpopulations 35 , 36 . For instance, circulating blood lymphocytes include phenotypically and functionally different cells, such as CD8+ cytotoxic lymphocytes, regulatory T cells and exhausted lymphocytes, whose balance can determine the predominantly antitumor or protumor activity of adaptive immunity 35 .…”

Clinical Outcomes of Specific Immunotherapy in Advanced Pancreatic Cancer: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

“…The potential reason might be that the majority of the patients included in this meta-analysis subgroup were treated with chemotherapy. Compared with the other subsets of T lymphocytes, the CD8 + T cells are more sensitive to cytotoxic chemotherapy and no less than 3 months are required after chemotherapy is terminated to return to baseline cell numbers regardless of the patient's age [ 47 ]. Kondo et al [ 17 ] confirmed this finding in the same subgroup.…”

Intratumoral versus Circulating Lymphoid Cells as Predictive Biomarkers in Lung Cancer Patients Treated with Immune Checkpoint Inhibitors: Is the Easiest Path the Best One?

“…Although immune cells present in blood might not be restricted to some of the components of the TME, its presence might indirectly reflect the regulators present in TME. Indeed, some studies have correlated different inflammatory biomarkers, such as T cells, DC or NK cells, in blood and tumor tissue samples and found a good correlation between both sites [59,60].…”