Journal
BRITISH JOURNAL OF CANCER
Volume 119, Issue 7, Pages 840-846Publisher
NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP
DOI: 10.1038/s41416-018-0266-8
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Funding
- Swedish Research Council (STARGET)
- Breast Cancer Theme Center (BRECT) at Karolinska Institutet
- Swedish Cancer Society
- Radiumhemmets Forskningsfonder
- Stockholm County Council (SLL)
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BACKGROUND: The role of B-lymphocytes in solid tumours is unclear. Tumour biology studies have implied both anti- and pro-tumoural effects and prognostic studies have mainly linked B-cells to increased survival. This study aimed to analyse the clinical relevance of B-lymphocytes in renal cell cancer (RCC), where information on the prognostic impact is lacking. METHODS: Following immunohistochemistry (IHC) stainings with a CD20 antibody, density of CD20+ B-cells was quantified in an RCC discovery-and validation cohort. Associations of B-cell infiltration, determined by CD20 expression or a B-cell gene-signature, and survival was also analysed in 14 publicly available gene expression datasets of cancer, including the kidney clear cell carcinoma (KIRC) dataset. RESULTS: IHC analyses of the discovery cohort identified a previously unrecognised subgroup of RCC patients with high infiltration of CD20+ B-cells. The B-cell-high subgroup displayed significantly shorter survival according to uni- and multi-variable analyses. The association between poor prognosis and high density of CD20+ B-cells was confirmed in the validation cohort. Analyses of the KIRC gene expression dataset using the B-cell signature confirmed findings from IHC analyses. Analyses of other gene expression datasets, representing 13 different tumour types, indicated that the poor survival-association of B-cells occurred selectively in RCC. CONCLUSION: This exploratory study identifies a previously unrecognised poor-prognosis subset of RCC with high density of CD20-defined B-cells.
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