Abstract 1073: Significant association of neutrophils in regional lymph nodes with lymphangiogenesis and micrometastasis by gastric cancer

Abstract

Abstract Recent evidences indicate that inflammation is the seventh hallmark of cancer. Several researches reported that tumor-associated neutrophils (TANs) promote tumor invasion or tumor-induced angiogenesis in the tumor microenvironment. However, the relation between TANs and lymph node metastasis remains unclear. We previously reported that increasing of intranodal lymphatic vessel density (LVD) was significantly correlated to tumor progression, lymph node metastasis and poor prognosis of the patients with gastric cancer. In this study, we aimed to reveal the affect of TANs in regional lymph nodes in terms of micrometastasis and the prognostic impact. TANs and micrometastasis were immunohistochemically estimated by anti-CD15 and anti-pan cytokeratin antibody in 1596 lymph nodes from 52 patients who were underwent gastrectomy with lymphadenectomy. We investigated the association of the density of TANs in regional lymph nodes with clinicopathological factors. The number of TANs in regional lymph nodes had a positive correlation with accumulation of intranodal LVD and micrometastasis. Furthermore we divided another 96 patients into two groups according to median TAN number of 39 to investigate the prognostic value. Patients in high CD15+TANs group had significantly poorer prognosis compared with low group. Our results suggested that TANs in regional lymph nodes promote the invasion of cancer cells to lymph nodes by augmentation of lymphangiogenesis and contribute to tumor progression. In conclusion, TANs might be an attractive target of novel bioloigical therapies of gastric cancer. Citation Format: Mao Tokumoto, Hiroaki Tanaka, Masaichi Ohira, Yukie Go, Yoshihiro Okita, Katunobu Sakurai, Takahiro Toyokawa, Naoshi Kubo, Kazuya Muguruma, Kiyoshi Maeda, Tetsuji Sawada, Kosei Hirakawa. Significant association of neutrophils in regional lymph nodes with lymphangiogenesis and micrometastasis by gastric cancer. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 105th Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2014 Apr 5-9; San Diego, CA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2014;74(19 Suppl):Abstract nr 1073. doi:10.1158/1538-7445.AM2014-1073