Immunoregulatory Function of HLA-G in Gastric Cancer

• Published in: Asian Pacific journal of cancer prevention : APJCP Vol. 14; no. 12; pp. 7681 - 7684
• Main Authors: Tuncel, Tolga, Karagoz, Bulent, Haholu, Aptullah, Ozgun, Alpaslan, Emirzeoglu, Levent, Bilgi, Oguz, Kandemir, Emin Gokhan
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: Korean
• Published: 2013
• Subjects: gastric cancer; CD8 T lymphocytes; treg cells; HLA-G
• ISSN: 1513-7368; 2476-762X

Background: Human leukocyte antigen (HLA)-G-positive gastric cancers are associated with poor survival, but links with tumor escape mechanisms remain to be determined. Materials and Methods: We used immunohistochemistry to investigate HLA-G expression, tumor infiltrating CD8+ T lymphocytes, and Treg cells in 52 gastric cancer patients. Results: There were 29 cancer-related deaths during the follow-up period. Kaplan-Meier analysis indicated that patients with HLA-G-positive (n=16) primary tumors had a significantly poorer prognosis than patients with HLA-G-negative tumors (n=36, p=0.008). The median survival time was 14 months and 47 months, respectively. Patients with high numbers of Tregs and low numbers of CD8+T lymphocytes in the primary tumor had a poorer prognosis than those with low numbers of Tregs and high numbers of CD8+T lymphocytes (p=0.034, p=0.043). Multivariate Cox proportional hazard regression analysis showed that HLA-G expression (hazard ratio: 2.662; 95% confidence interval: 1.242-5.723; p=0.012) and stage (hazard ratio: 2.012;95% confidence interval: 1.112-3.715; p=0.041) were independent unfavorable factors for patient survival. Conclusions: We found a significant positive correlation between HLA-G expression and the number of tumor infiltrating Tregs (p=0.01) and a negative correlation with the number of CD8+T lymphocytes (p=0.041). HLA-G may protect gastric cancer cells from cytolysis by inducing Foxp3+Treg lymphocytes and suppressing CD8+T lymphocytes.