AUTHOR=Xiao Wen-jun , Xu Fu-jiang , Zhang Xuan , Zhou Shu-xian , Zhang Hai-liang , Dai Bo , Zhu Yao , Shi Guo-hai , Shen Yi-jun , Zhu Yi-ping , Qu Yuan-yuan , Zhao Jian-yuan , Ye Ding-wei TITLE=The Prognostic Value of Programmed Death-Ligand 1 in a Chinese Cohort With Clear Cell Renal Cell Carcinoma JOURNAL=Frontiers in Oncology VOLUME=9 YEAR=2019 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/oncology/articles/10.3389/fonc.2019.00879 DOI=10.3389/fonc.2019.00879 ISSN=2234-943X ABSTRACT=

Objective: To investigate the association between tumor PD-L1 expression and patient survival to determine whether PD-L1 represents an independent prognostic feature for patients with non-metastatic clear cell renal cell carcinoma (RCC).

Patients and Methods: The tissue bank of the Fudan University Shanghai Cancer Center was queried to identity tissue samples of patients treated with radical nephrectomy, for non-metastatic sporadic clear cell RCC (ccRCC) between 2008 and 2015. Real-time polymerase chain reaction and immunohistochemistry staining was performed to detect the expression level of PD-L1 in paired cancer tissue and paracancerous tissue.

Results: Three-hundred-and-thirty patients were enrolled in this study, with a mean age of 55.0 years at surgery and a mean tumor size of 5.2 cm. Two-hundred-and-forty-two (73.3%) and 88 (26.7%) patients showed a high and low expression of PD-L1 mRNA, respectively, while 254 patients had positive PD-L1 immunohistochemistry staining. Two-hundred-and-ninety-two patients had consistent results for mRNA and the PD-L1 protein based on these different detection methods. Patients with high PD-L1 expression were more likely to exhibit adverse pathologic features including an advanced T stage (P = 0.002) and lymph node metastasis (P = 0.044). The Kaplan–Meier curves of PFS and OS stratified by PD-L1 expression had a statistically significant difference. PD-L1 expression maintained a significant predictive role for PFS and OS in the multivariate cox model.

Conclusions: Our data suggests that PD-L1 correlates with prognosis in RCC and targeting the PD-1/PD-L1 pathway should be considered in the treatment of RCC patients.