Evaluation of cytokines in the tumor microenvironment of lung cancer using bronchoalveolar lavage fluid analysis.

Content Provider	Europe PMC
Author	Bezel, Pascal Valaperti, Alan Steiner, Urs Scholtze, Dieter Wieser, Stephan Vonow-Eisenring, Maya Widmer, Andrea Kowalski, Benedikt Kohler, Malcolm Franzen, Daniel P.
Abstract	IntroductionLung cancer is the leading cause of death by cancer. In recent years, immunotherapy with checkpoint inhibitors (ICI) emerged as a promising new therapeutic approach. However, a deeper understanding of the immunologic responses adjacent to the tumor known as tumor microenvironment (TME) is needed. Our study investigated TME of lung cancer by analyzing cytokines in bronchoalveolar lavage fluid (BALF).Materials and methodsBetween January 2018 and June 2019, 119 patients were prospectively enrolled in this study. For each cancer patient, levels of 16 cytokines (fractalkine, granulocyte–macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF), interferon gamma (IFN-γ), tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-α), and interleukins (IL): IL-1b, IL-2, IL-4, IL-5, IL-6, IL-7, IL-8, IL-10, IL-12p70, IL-13, IL-17A, and IL-23) were measured in BALF and serum and compared to healthy individuals and patients with other lung diseases.ResultsThere were several significant differences of cytokine levels of patients with lung cancer compared to healthy individuals. However, none of them remained in the multivariate analysis compared to other lung diseases in either BALF or serum. Furthermore, there were no significant differences between the groups in cell differentiation of either BALF or serum. Cytokine levels in BALF were generally near the lower detection limit and showed almost no correlation with their respective levels measured in serum of the same individual.ConclusionsCytokines in BALF and serum of lung cancer patients may indicate unspecific inflammation. BAL is not recommendable as a tool to investigate TME of lung cancer. Therefore, cytokines measured in BALF are probably not appropriate as predictors in patients treated with ICIs.Supplementary InformationThe online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s00262-020-02798-z.
Related Links	https://europepmc.org/backend/ptpmcrender.fcgi?accid=PMC8195789&blobtype=pdf
ISSN	03407004
Journal	Cancer Immunology, Immunotherapy [Cancer Immunol Immunother]
Volume Number	70
DOI	10.1007/s00262-020-02798-z
PubMed Central reference number	PMC8195789
Issue Number	7
PubMed reference number	33394095
e-ISSN	14320851
Language	English
Publisher	Springer Berlin Heidelberg
Publisher Date	2021-01-04
Publisher Place	Berlin/Heidelberg
Access Restriction	Open
Rights License	Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. © The Author(s) 2021
Subject Keyword	Lung cancer Tumor microenvironment Cytokines Bronchoalveolar lavage fluid Whole-blood serum
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article
Subject	Immunology and Allergy Cancer Research Immunology Oncology