ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Oncol.
Sec. Cancer Metabolism
Volume 15 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fonc.2025.1578419
This article is part of the Research TopicMetabolic Crosstalk between Cancer Cells and Immune Cells in the Tumor Microenvironment: Cellular and Molecular Insights, and their Therapeutic ImplicationsView all 14 articles
The predictive value of total body PET/CT in PD-L1 high expression and immunotherapy in advanced non-small cell lung cancer patients
Provisionally accepted
- Henan Provincial People's Hospital, Zhengzhou, China
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Total-body positron-emission tomography/computed tomography (PET/CT) using uEXPLORER scanners demonstrates superior imaging capabilities for assessing programmed death ligand 1 (PD-L1) expression heterogeneity between primary tumors (PT) and metastatic tumors (MT) in advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). This retrospective study of 99 treatment-naïve NSCLC patients revealed that metabolic parameters (SUVmax, SUR-L, SUR-BP) derived from biopsy-correlated PET/CT sites significantly predicted PD-L1 high expression (TC≥50% or IC≥10% by IHC). SUR-L exhibited the highest diagnostic accuracy (AUC=0.758, P<0.001). Among 30 immunotherapy-treated patients, PD-L1 positivity and SUR-BP≥7.30 were associated with prolonged disease-free survival (DFS) (P=0.012 and P=0.035, respectively). Our findings establish SUR-BP as a novel non-invasive biomarker for immunotherapy prognosis in NSCLC, addressing spatial heterogeneity challenges in PD-L1 assessment.
Keywords: NSCLC, SUR, PD-L1, Immunotherapy, prognosis
Received: 17 Feb 2025; Accepted: 30 May 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Jin, Hu, Zhang, Long, Xuan, Wu, Xu and Gao. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Bingxin Hu, Henan Provincial People's Hospital, Zhengzhou, China
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