Tissue Infiltrating Immune Cells and Endometrial Cancer Prognosis

Maureen Drakes,Cheryl M Czerlanis,Swati Mehrotra,Ronald K Potkul,Patrick J Stiff

doi:10.31487/j.cor.2021.04.01

Abstract

The number of patients diagnosed with endometrial cancer surpasses that of any other gynaecological cancer. This disease is usually detected early after disease onset and with current therapy 80 percent of patients with early-stage disease reach a five-year survival milestone. However, patients with advanced or recurrent disease have a grim outcome and the five-year survival rate for these patients is only about 16 percent. In several cancer types there is accumulating evidence that immune cells play a crucial role in the initiation, progression and outcome of disease. In order to provide novel and effective immunotherapeutic treatments for advanced disease endometrial cancer, an understanding of the relevance of immune cells needs to be addressed. This review briefly discusses current knowledge in the area of immune cells and how they may alter the course of endometrial cancer, as well as the implications of these cells for novel therapy and outcome.

Highlights

Endometrial cancer is the predominantly occurring female gynaecologic cancer in the Western world
In EC, other critical immune regulators expressed on T cells include immune checkpoint molecules such as cytotoxic T lymphocyte associated protein-4 (CTLA-4) and programmed death-1 (PD-1), among others, which contribute to T cell exhaustion and pro-tumor immune responses [35,36,37,38,39]
Further study showed that T cell immunoglobulin and mucin domain-containing protein-3 (TIM-3) expression on tumor natural killer (NK) cells from EC patients with lymph node (LN) invasion was higher in these patients with worse disease, than in those

Summary

Introduction

Endometrial cancer (uterine corpus endometrial cancer; EC) is the predominantly occurring female gynaecologic cancer in the Western world. In several cancer types there is accumulating evidence that immune cells play a crucial role in the initiation, progression and outcome of disease. In order to provide novel and effective immunotherapeutic treatments for advanced disease endometrial cancer, an understanding of the relevance of immune cells needs to be addressed.

Results

Conclusion