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Inflammatory Microenvironment in Early Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer: Exploring the Predictive Value of Radiomics

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Despite therapeutic advances in treatments and translational research, patient prognosis for non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) remains unsatisfactory. Although stage I NSCLC has a relatively favorable prognosis than more advanced stage disease, almost 40% of patients diagnosed with a localized NSCLC are predicted to have a poor prognosis after surgery. The reasons why patients diagnosed with the same NSCLC traits will experience good or bad outcomes are far from being known. Therefore, new diagnostic paradigms are needed to predict treatment response and inform clinical decision-making. The tumor microenvironment is widely orchestrated by inflammatory cells and is an essential participant in carcinogenesis, contributing to the patient’s prognosis. This retrospective study explored the value use of computed tomography (CT) images as a “virtual biopsy”, in assessing the biomarkers CD68 and IL-1β that we have identified on a biological scale to be related to NSCLC patients’ overall survival (OS).

Abstract

Patient prognosis is a critical consideration in the treatment decision-making process. Conventionally, patient outcome is related to tumor characteristics, the cancer spread, and the patients’ conditions. However, unexplained differences in survival time are often observed, even among patients with similar clinical and molecular tumor traits. This study investigated how inflammatory radiomic features can correlate with evidence-based biological analyses to provide translated value in assessing clinical outcomes in patients with NSCLC. We analyzed a group of 15 patients with stage I NSCLC who showed extremely different OS outcomes despite apparently harboring the same tumor characteristics. We thus analyzed the inflammatory levels in their tumor microenvironment (TME) either biologically or radiologically, focusing our attention on the NLRP3 cancer-dependent inflammasome pathway. We determined an NLRP3-dependent peritumoral inflammatory status correlated with the outcome of NSCLC patients, with markedly increased OS in those patients with a low rate of NLRP3 activation. We consistently extracted specific radiomic signatures that perfectly discriminated patients’ inflammatory levels and, therefore, their clinical outcomes. We developed and validated a radiomic model unleashing quantitative inflammatory features from CT images with an excellent performance to predict the evolution pattern of NSCLC tumors for a personalized and accelerated patient management in a non-invasive way.

SUBMITTER: Perrone M

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9323656 | biostudies-literature |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Project description:IntroductionCancer progression is determined not only by the malignant behavior of tumors but also by the immune microenvironment. The tumor immune microenvironment also plays a pivotal role in determining the clinical response of non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) to immunotherapies. To understand the possible mechanisms and explore new targets in lung cancer immunotherapy, we characterized the immune profiles in NSCLC patients.MethodsSeventy-one NSCLC patients who underwent radical resection were selected. The immune cell composition in paired tumor and adjacent normal lung tissues was tested by flow cytometry. The associations of tumor immune microenvironment characteristics with clinicopathological factors and overall survival were analyzed. Kaplan-Meier curves and Cox proportional hazards models were used to determine differences in survival.ResultsCompared with adjacent normal lung tissues, an increased proportion of CD45+ hematopoietic-derived cells, CD4+ T cell subtypes, Tregs and B cells was observed in tumor samples with a reduced frequency of myeloid cell populations. There was no significant increase in total CD8+ T cells, but both PD1+ and CD38+ CD8+ T cells were significantly enriched in tumor samples and statistically significantly associated with tumor size. In addition, positive CD38 expression was highly correlated with PD1 positivity. A high proportion of CD8+ T cells and a low percentage of PD1+ CD8+ T cells were statistically significantly associated with better survival in stage II and III patients, whereas a low frequency of CD38+ CD8+ T cells was statistically significantly associated with better survival in all patients and identified as an independent prognostic factor (p=0.049).ConclusionWe profiled the immune cells in the tumor tissues of NSCLC patients using flow cytometry. The results revealed significant enrichment of infiltrating immune cells. A strong correlation was identified between CD38 and PD-1 expression on CD8+ T cells in tumors. CD8+ T cells and their subtypes play a critical role in the prediction of prognosis.

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Inflammatory Microenvironment in Early Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer: Exploring the Predictive Value of Radiomics

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