Research Paper Volume 11, Issue 24 pp 12568—12580
Prognostic role of programmed death-ligand 1 expression in patients with biliary tract cancer: a meta-analysis
- 1 Department of General Surgery, The Second Affiliated Hospital of Jianghan University, Wuhan, China
- 2 Department of Oncology, The Second Affiliated Hospital of Jianghan University, Wuhan, Hubei 430000, China
- 3 Department of Cardiology, The Second Affiliated Hospital of Jianghan University, Wuhan, Wuhan, Hubei 430000, China
- 4 Department of Pharmacology, The Second Affiliated Hospital of Jianghan University, Wuhan, Wuhan, Hubei 430000, China
Received: September 11, 2019 Accepted: November 26, 2019 Published: December 27, 2019
https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.102588How to Cite
Copyright © 2019 Lei et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
Previous studies investigated the prognostic role of programmed death-ligand 1 (PD-L1) expression in patients with biliary tract cancer (BTC); however, the results remained controversial. Therefore, we conducted the current meta-analysis with the aim of clarifying the association between PD-L1 expression and prognosis as well as with several important clinicopathological features of BTC. We searched PubMed, Embase, and Web of Science for relevant studies. Studies that detected PD-L1 expression in tumor cells by using immunohistochemistry (IHC) were selected. Pooled hazard ratios (HRs) and pooled odds ratios (ORs) with 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were calculated to estimate the correlations. In total, 15 independent studies with 1,776 patients were included in this meta-analysis. The pooled data demonstrated that high PD-L1 expression was associated with poor overall survival (n=15, HR=1.79, 95% CI=1.55–2.07, p<0.001). The correlation between PD-L1 expression and disease-free survival was not significant (n=6, HR=1.38, 95% CI=1.00–1.91, p=0.051). In addition, no significant correlation was observed between PD-L1 expression and clinical features in patients with BTC. Our study results showed that PD-L1 expression could play a pivotal role as an effective factor of poor prognosis in patients with BTC.
Abbreviations
PD-L1: programmed cell death ligand 1; CCA: cholangiocarcinoma; ELISA: enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay; CAF: cancer-associated fibroblast; TAM: tumor-associated macrophage; TIL: tumor-infiltrating lymphocyte; CI: confidence interval; HR: hazard ratio; NOS: Newcastle-Ottawa Scale; OS: overall survival; PFS: progression-free survival; PRISMA: Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses; FDA: Food and Drug Administration; RCT: randomized controlled trial; ICI: immune checkpoint inhibitor.