Abstract
Tumor-associated macrophages (TAMs) have been characterized as a critical population of immunosuppressive cells in a variety of tumor types. PD-L1 (also termed B7-H1) has been described to exert co-inhibitory and immune regulatory functions. Here, in ovarian cancer, PD-L1 is selectively overexpressed on some TAM compared that of benign ovarian disease. When expanding the data in peripheral blood, the proportion of PD-L1+CD68+ cell among CD68+ cells and the intensity of PD-L1 staining on CD68+ cell in healthy group were similar to that observed in ovarian cyst group; instead, these two measures were significantly higher in ovarian cancer group, thereafter related to TNM stage. Interestingly, intracellular levels of IL-10, IL-6, TNF-α, and IFN-γ in PD-L1+CD68+ macrophage were higher than those in PD-L1−CD68+ macrophage, especially IL-6 expression. Based on the PD-L1 receptor PD-1 expression on tumor-infiltrating cytotoxic cells, our data supported that expression of PD-L1 on TAM promoted apoptosis of T cells via interaction with PD-1 on CD8+T cells. Taken together, these results suggested that PD-L1-expressing macrophage represents a novel suppressor cell population in ovarian cancer, which contributes immune escape of ovarian cancer.
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Acknowledgments
This work was supported by the “Project of National Natural Science Foundation of China (81101556),” “Research Innovation Project for University Graduate Student in Jiangsu Province (CXZZ11_0110),” “Suzhou social development project (SYS201338)” and “Jiangsu Province’s Key laboratory of Medicine (XK201135).”
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Qu, QX., Huang, Q., Shen, Y. et al. The increase of circulating PD-L1-expressing CD68+ macrophage in ovarian cancer. Tumor Biol. 37, 5031–5037 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13277-015-4066-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13277-015-4066-y