Evaluating and validating the predictive ability of preoperative systemic inflammatory/immune cells in gastric cancer following R0 resection

Prolonged hyperthermic intraperitoneal chemotherapy duration with 90 minutes cisplatin might increase overall survival in gastric cancer patients with peritoneal metastases

BACKGROUND

Advanced gastric cancer with synchronous peritoneal metastases (GC-PM) is associated with a poor prognosis. Although cytoreductive surgery with hyperthermic intraperitoneal chemotherapy (CRS-HIPEC) is a promising approach, only a limited number of Western studies exist.

AIM

To investigate the clinicopathological outcomes of patients who underwent CRS-HIPEC for GC-PM.

METHODS

A retrospective analysis of patients with GC-PM was conducted. All patients were seen at the Department of General and Visceral Surgery, Hospital Barmherzige Brüder, Regensburg, Germany between January 2011 and July 2021 and underwent CRS-HIPEC. Preoperative laboratory results, the use of neoadjuvant trastuzumab, and the details of CRS-HIPEC, including peritoneal carcinomatosis index, completeness of cytoreduction, and surgical procedures were recorded. Disease-specific (DSS), and overall survival (OS) of patients were calculated.

RESULTS

A total of 73 patients were included in the study. Patients treated with neoadjuvant trastuzumab (n = 5) showed longer DSS (P = 0.0482). Higher white blood cell counts (DSS: P = 0.0433) and carcinoembryonic antigen levels (OS and DSS: P < 0.01), and lower hemoglobin (OS and DSS: P < 0.05) and serum total protein (OS: P = 0.0368) levels were associated with shorter survival. Longer HIPEC duration was associated with more advantageous median survival times [60-min (n = 59): 12.86 mo; 90-min (n = 14): 27.30 mo], but without statistical difference. To obtain additional data from this observation, further separation of the study population was performed. First, propensity score-matched patient pairs (n = 14 in each group) were created. Statistically different DSS was found between patient pairs (hazard ratio = 0.2843; 95% confidence interval: 0.1119-0.7222; P = 0.0082). Second, those patients who were treated with trastuzumab and/or had human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 positivity (median survival: 12.68 mo vs 24.02 mo), or had to undergo the procedure before 2016 (median survival: 12.68 mo vs 27.30 mo; P = 0.0493) were removed from the original study population.

CONCLUSION

Based on our experience, CRS-HIPEC is a safe and secure method to improve the survival of advanced GC-PM patients. Prolonged HIPEC duration may serve as a good therapy for these patients.

A novel preoperative inflammation score system established for postoperative prognosis predicting of intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma

BACKGROUND

Inflammation is implicated in tumorigenesis and has been reported as an important prognostic factor in cancers. In this study, we aimed to develop and validate a novel inflammation score (IFS) system based on 12 inflammatory markers and explore its impact on intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma (ICC) survival after hepatectomy.

METHODS

Clinical data of 446 ICC patients undergoing surgical treatment were collected from the Primary Liver Cancer Big Data, and then served as a training cohort to establish the IFS. Furthermore, an internal validation cohort including 175 patients was used as internal validation cohort of the IFS. A survival tree analysis was used to divide ICC patients into three groups (low-, median-, and high- IFS-score groups) according to different IFS values. Kaplan-Meier (KM) curves were used to compare the overall survival (OS) and recurrence-free survival (RFS) rates among three different groups. Cox regression analyses were applied to explore the independent risk factors influencing OS and RFS.

RESULTS

In the training cohort, 149 patients were in the low-IFS-score group, 187 in the median-IFS-score group, and 110 in the high-IFS-score group. KM curves showed that the high-IFS-score group had worse OS and RFS rates than those of the low- and median-IFS-score groups (P < 0.001) in both the training and validation cohorts. Moreover, multivariable Cox analyses identified high IFS as an independent risk factor for OS and RFS in the training cohort. The area under the curve values for OS prediction of IFS were 0.703 and 0.664 in the training and validation cohorts, respectively, which were higher than those of the American Joint Committee on Cancer (AJCC) 7th edition TNM stage, AJCC 8th edition TNM stage, and the Child-Pugh score.

CONCLUSION

Our results revealed the IFS was an independent risk factor for OS and RFS in patients with ICC after hepatectomy and could serve as an effective prognostic prediction system in daily clinical practice.

Correlation of peripheral blood biomarkers with clinical outcomes in NSCLC patients with high PD-L1 expression treated with pembrolizumab

Background

Immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) are currently the standard therapy in advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC); however, there is no well-established prognostic biomarker. We investigated the relationship between survival outcomes and three peripheral blood biomarkers, including the neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio (NLR), platelet-to-lymphocyte ratio (PLR) and monocyte-to-lymphocyte ratio (MLR), as well as a new score termed the risk blood biomarker (RBB), calculated from the combination of the neutrophil-monocyte-to-lymphocyte ratio (NMLR) and white blood cell count (WBC).

Methods

This study included patients with stage IV or recurrent NSCLC confirmed with programmed death ligand 1 (PD-L1) expression ≥50% who received pembrolizumab monotherapy as first-line treatment at the Virgen del Rocío University Hospital in Seville, Spain. To establish the relationship between baseline peripheral blood biomarkers and survival outcomes, progression free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS), we used the Kaplan-Meier method and multivariable Cox regression models.

Results

A total of 51 patients were included in this study. In multivariate analysis, baseline NLR and PLR showed a strong association with PFS [NLR hazard ratio (HR): 0.19, 95% confidence interval (CI): 0.09–0.44, P<0.001; PLR HR: 0.46, 95% CI: 0.23–0.92, P=0.03] and OS (NLR HR: 0.07, 95% CI: 0.02–0.19, P<0.001; PLR HR: 0.29, 95% CI: 0.13–0.67, P=0.004), and the MLR was associated with OS (MLR HR: 0.34, 95% CI: 0.15–0.76, P=0.01). According to the RBB score, groups with lower scores were associated with superior PFS (group 0: HR: 0.16, 95% CI: 0.06–0.41, P<0.001 and group 1: HR: 0.29, 95% CI: 0.12–0.73, P=0.01) and OS (group 0: HR: 0.04, 95% CI: 0.01–0.17, P<0.001 and group 1: HR: 0.15, 95% CI: 0.05–0.42, P<0.001).

Conclusions

Low baseline NLR, MLR and PLR are significantly associated with better PFS, and low baseline NLR and PLR are associated with better OS. Additionally, we identified three subgroups of patients using the RBB score, and low scores were associated with improved survival outcomes and response to therapy.