Role of T helper 17 cytokines in the tumour immune inflammation response of patients with laryngeal squamous cell carcinoma

The IL-17 family in diseases: from bench to bedside

The interleukin-17 (IL-17) family comprises six members (IL-17A-17F), and recently, all of its related receptors have been discovered. IL-17 was first discovered approximately 30 years ago. Members of this family have various biological functions, including driving an inflammatory cascade during infections and autoimmune diseases, as well as boosting protective immunity against various pathogens. IL-17 is a highly versatile proinflammatory cytokine necessary for vital processes including host immune defenses, tissue repair, inflammatory disease pathogenesis, and cancer progression. However, how IL-17 performs these functions remains controversial. The multifunctional properties of IL-17 have attracted research interest, and emerging data have gradually improved our understanding of the IL-17 signaling pathway. However, a comprehensive review is required to understand its role in both host defense functions and pathogenesis in the body. This review can aid researchers in better understanding the mechanisms underlying IL-17's roles in vivo and provide a theoretical basis for future studies aiming to regulate IL-17 expression and function. This review discusses recent progress in understanding the IL-17 signaling pathway and its physiological roles. In addition, we present the mechanism underlying IL-17's role in various pathologies, particularly, in IL-17-induced systemic lupus erythematosus and IL-17-related tumor cell transformation and metastasis. In addition, we have briefly discussed promising developments in the diagnosis and treatment of autoimmune diseases and tumors.

IL-17 Affects the Progression, Metastasis, and Recurrence of Laryngeal Cancer via the Inhibition of Apoptosis through Activation of the PI3K/AKT/FAS/FASL Pathways

Background

Cytokines play important roles in the development and prognosis of laryngeal cancer (LC). Interleukin-17 (IL-17) from a distinct subset of CD4+ T cells may significantly induce cancer-elicited inflammation to prevent tumor immune surveillance.

Methods

The expression levels of IL-17 were examined among 60 patients with LC. Immunofluorescence colocalization experiments were performed to verify the localization of IL-17 and FAS/FASL in Hep-2 and Tu212 cells. The role of IL-17 was determined using siRNA techniques in the LC cell line.

Results

In the LC patients, cytokines were dysregulated in LC tissues compared with normal tissues. It was found that IL-17 was overexpressed in a cohort of 60 LC tumors paired with nontumor tissues. Moreover, high IL-17 expression was significantly associated with the advanced T category, the late clinical stage, differentiation, lymph node metastasis, and recurrence. In addition, the time course expression of FAS and FASL was observed after stimulation and treatment with the IL-17 stimulator. Finally, in vitro experiments demonstrated that IL-17 functioned as an oncogene by inhibiting the apoptosis of LC cells via the PI3K/AKT/FAS/FASL pathways.

Conclusions

In summary, these findings demonstrated for the first time the role of IL-17 as a tumor promoter and a prometastatic factor in LC and indicated that IL-17 may have an oncogenic role and serve as a potential prognostic biomarker and therapeutic target in LC.

Efficacy and prognosis of surgical treatment in ARMM and its effects on immune and inflammatory profiles

The aim of the present study was to investigate the efficacy and prognosis of surgical treatment in anorectal malignant melanoma (ARMM) as well as its effects on immune and inflammatory profiles. A total of 64 patients with ARMM were enrolled and divided into control group (n=32) and observation group (n=32) based on different therapeutic methods. Patients in the observation group underwent wide local excision, while those in the control group were given non-surgical treatment. The immune function was compared between the two groups after treatment. The expression levels of serum IL-17, IL-23 and vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) were compared between the groups before and after treatment. Patients were followed up for 5 years to observe the recurrence and survival rates in the two groups. Compared with those in the control group, the levels of cluster of differentiation (CD)3⁺, CD4⁺ and CD4⁺/CD8⁺ were increased, while the level of CD8⁺ was reduced in the observation group (P<0.05). The levels of serum IL-17, IL-23 and VEGF were significantly lower in both groups at 4, 6 and 8 weeks after treatment than those before treatment, and the decrease was more obvious in the observation group (P<0.05). The observation group exhibited a notably elevated 5-year survival rate and a remarkably decreased recurrence rate in comparison with the control group (P<0.05). For ARMM, surgical treatment is more effective than non-surgical treatment, which has less effect on immune function, is able to reduce serum IL-17, IL-23 and VEGF levels, lower recurrence rate, improve patient survival rate, and plays a certain positive role in prolonging the survival time of ARMM patients.

Expression Analysis of the Mediators of Epithelial to Mesenchymal Transition and Early Risk Assessment of Therapeutic Failure in Laryngeal Carcinoma

Laryngeal squamous cell carcinoma (LSCC) is an aggressive malignancy which lacks early predictors of prognosis. Here, we hypothesized that expression and prognostic characterization of the critical mediators of epithelial to mesenchymal transition (EMT) may provide key information in this regard. Linear regression and multiple correspondence analyses were performed on immunohistochemical data obtained from 20 invasive tumors. Principal component and unsupervised hierarchical clustering were used to analyze the dataset patterns associating with LSCC metastatic profile. Survival and death risk assessments were performed using Kaplan–Meier and hazard ratio tests. Data mining analysis using CHAID decision tree and logistic regression analysis was applied to define the predictive value of the risk factors of tumor aggressiveness. Our analyses showed, that in invasive LSCC tumors, cells associating with a mesenchymal profile were likely to exhibit enhanced NOS2, TGF-β, and IL-17A expression levels, concomitantly to NF-κB nuclear translocation. IHC data deciphering determined that EMT induction was also linked to the enrichment of the tumors with CD68+ populations and IL-10 signal. Strikingly, dataset cluster analysis showed that these signatures could define distinct patterns of invasive tumors, where NOS2 associated with IL-10 expression, and TGF-β and IL-17A signals associated with MMP-9 activation. Decision tree analysis identified IL-17A as a possible predictor of LSCC aggressiveness. Altogether, our results show that distinct immunological patterns would support the acquisition of EMT features in invasive LSCC and suggest that IL-17A may be useful in the early identification of patients “at-risk” of therapeutic failure.

A New Method for Recognizing Cytokines Based on Feature Combination and a Support Vector Machine Classifier

Research on cytokine recognition is of great significance in the medical field due to the fact cytokines benefit the diagnosis and treatment of diseases, but the current methods for cytokine recognition have many shortcomings, such as low sensitivity and low F-score. Therefore, this paper proposes a new method on the basis of feature combination. The features are extracted from compositions of amino acids, physicochemical properties, secondary structures, and evolutionary information. The classifier used in this paper is SVM. Experiments show that our method is better than other methods in terms of accuracy, sensitivity, specificity, F-score and Matthew's correlation coefficient.

Radiotherapy vs surgery for T1-2N0M0 laryngeal squamous cell carcinoma: A population-based and propensity score matching study

There are conflicting reports about whether radiotherapy or surgery is optimal for early‐stage laryngeal squamous cell carcinoma (LSCC), although both have recently been recommended. Patients with T1‐2N0M0 LSCC in the population‐based SEER database who underwent radiotherapy or surgery were reviewed. Propensity score matching was used to eliminate the baseline variations. After matching, 1913 pairs of patients were included. Overall, patients who received radiotherapy had worse cancer‐specific survival than patients with surgery. After stratification, the survival in patients who received radiotherapy was worse with respect to the following characteristics: ≤60 years of age; T1a glottis cancer; well‐differentiated tumors; and with married status. In other patients, survival outcomes were similar in patients who received radiotherapy and underwent surgery. Our results indicate that radiotherapy is not preferable in early‐stage LSCC patients who are ≤60 years of age, have T1a glottis cancer or well‐differentiated tumors, or are married. In other patients, both radiotherapy and surgery are comparable. However, our results cannot be a reference before controlled, prospective trials are performed.