Medizinische Universität Graz Austria/Österreich - Forschungsportal - Medical University of Graz
Gewählte Publikation:
Sucher, F.
Expression of BAP1 and PD-L1 in pleural mesothelioma and correlation with clinical parameters
Humanmedizin; [ Diplomarbeit ] Medizinische Universität Graz; 2023. pp. 68
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- Abstract:
- Mesothelioma results from malignant proliferation of mesothelial cells, which most commonly affects the pleura (90%), followed by peritoneum, pericardium and tunica vaginalis testis. The latency period is very long and lasts for 20-70 years. This disease is associated with asbestos (80-90%) and mainly affects men. In Austria there are about 100 newly diagnosed cases per year. Therapy depends on many different parameters, the most important being tumor stage and histologic subtype. Early stages (I-IIIA) are treated by a multimodal approach (chemotherapy, surgery and radiotherapy) and in a palliative situation combination of chemotherapy +/- bevacizumab is used. Recently, personalized immunotherapy has also been introduced, but the prognosis and treatment options remain unsatisfactory. PD-L1 is a known biomarker for immunotherapy, and it is not commonly expressed in mesothelioma. It has also prognostic relevance. BAP-1 on the other hand has prognostic, but even more important, diagnostic role. The aim of our study was to analyze the expression of PD-L1 and BAP1 in our cohort, and correlate those with clinical data. For this retrospective study, a cohort of 57 consecutive mesothelioma patients, with adequate clinical data and enough tumor tissue for additional staining, was used. PD-L1 and BAP1 were stained according to the validated protocols. PD-L1 was evaluated as a tumor proportion score, and for BAP1 presence of loss of nuclear staining in tumor cells was recorded. Majority of patients (75.4%) had PD-L1 TPS <10%, and this correlated with longer overall survival (45.15 vs 18.53 months); however this difference was statistically not significant. BAP1 loss was present in 68.4%, without statistically significant correlation with survival. Both PD-L1 and BAP1 expression did not demonstrate correlation with other clinical parameters. Due to several important limitations of our study (small cohort, different antibodies used in comparison to some other studies, different sample size) we were not able to show any statistically significant data of analyzed markers. However, trends detected in our data are in concordance with majority of previously published studies, confirming potentially prognostic role of both antibodies, even in our rather small study group.