• DOI:10.1056/NEJMOA020177
• Corpus ID: 23584858

Intratumoral T cells, recurrence, and survival in epithelial ovarian cancer.

@article{Zhang2003IntratumoralTC,
  title={Intratumoral T cells, recurrence, and survival in epithelial ovarian cancer.},
  author={Lin Zhang and Jose R. Conejo-Garcia and Dionyssios Katsaros and Phyllis A. Gimotty and Marco Massobrio and Giorgia Regnani and Antonis Makrigiannakis and Heidi J. Gray and Katia Schlienger and Michael N. Liebman and Stephen C. Rubin and George Coukos},
  journal={The New England journal of medicine},
  year={2003},
  volume={348 3},
  pages={
          203-13
        }
}

• Lin Zhang, J. Conejo-Garcia, +9 authors G. Coukos
• Published 16 January 2003
• Medicine, Biology
• The New England journal of medicine

BACKGROUND
Although tumor-infiltrating T cells have been documented in ovarian carcinoma, a clear association with clinical outcome has not been established.

METHODS
We performed immunohistochemical analysis of 186 frozen specimens from advanced-stage ovarian carcinomas to assess the distribution of tumor-infiltrating T cells and conducted outcome analyses. Molecular analyses were performed in some tumors by real-time polymerase chain reaction.

RESULTS
CD3+ tumor-infiltrating T cells were detected within tumor-cell islets (intratumoral T cells) in 102 of the 186 tumors (54.8 percent); they were undetectable in 72 tumors (38.7 percent); the remaining 12 tumors (6.5 percent) could not be evaluated. There were significant differences in the distributions of progression-free survival and overall survival according to the presence or absence of intratumoral T cells (P<0.001 for both comparisons). The five-year overall survival rate was 38.0 percent among patients whose tumors contained T cells and 4.5 percent among patients whose tumors contained no T cells in islets. Significant differences in the distributions of progression-free survival and overall survival according to the presence or absence of intratumoral T cells (P<0.001 for both comparisons) were also seen among 74 patients with a complete clinical response after debulking and platinum-based chemotherapy: the five-year overall survival rate was 73.9 percent among patients whose tumors contained T cells and 11.9 percent among patients whose tumors contained no T cells in islets. The presence of intratumoral T cells independently correlated with delayed recurrence or delayed death in multivariate analysis and was associated with increased expression of interferon-gamma, interleukin-2, and lymphocyte-attracting chemokines within the tumor. The absence of intratumoral T cells was associated with increased levels of vascular endothelial growth factor.

CONCLUSIONS
The presence of intratumoral T cells correlates with improved clinical outcome in advanced ovarian carcinoma.