Clinicopathological and prognostic significance of circulating immune cells in the patients with pancreatic cancer

Abstract

Pancreatic cancer is characterized by immune tolerance and immunotherapeutic resistance. Circulating cells may reflect the general immune status of the patient. However, the circulating immune status of pancreatic cancer are largely uncharacterized. Here, the subset distribution was analyzed in peripheral blood samples from 101 patients with pancreatic cancer and 142 healthy volunteers by using flow cytometry. The differences of the subpopulation distribution in the two groups and the relation between clinical parameters with the subset were determined. Moreover, the clinical application of each subset as prognosis biomarker was also assessed by Kaplan-Meier analysis. The reduced proportion of total lymphocyte and upregulated CD4/CD8 ratio were observed in pancreatic cancer than those in healthy controls. Of note, increased proportions of lymphocyte and NKT cells were noticed more frequently in patients over 60 years (P = 0.043) and patients with metastasis (P = 0.027), respectively. However, our correlation analyses revealed no correlation between the proportions of T cells, B cell and NK cells with clinicopathologic features. Furthermore, the analysis displayed that proportions of CD4+T cell, B cell and CD4/CD8 ratio significantly reduced in the cohort of post-operation, while the frequency of CD8+T cell and NKT cells elevated remarkably. Finally, the Kaplan-Meier analysis indicated that patients with high lymphocyte proportion might have prolonged overall survival (P = 0.007). The altered distribution of peripheral blood immune cell subpopulation in pancreatic cancer and its relationship with clinical outcome highlight the potential use of circulating immune subsets as prognostic biomarkers in pancreatic cancer.