Expression of programmed death ligand 1 is associated with poor prognosis in myeloid sarcoma patients

Myeloid sarcoma (MS) is a rare condition and is an extramedullary tumour of immature myeloid cells. It is now known that the programmed death 1 (PD-1)/programmed death ligand 1 (PD-L1) pathway suppresses the host antitumor responses and that these products are expressed on both tumour cells and tumour-infiltrating cells in various malignancies. However, little is known about the significance of PD-1/PD-L1 expression on tumour cells and tumour microenvironmental cells in MS. To investigate the clinicopathological significance of PD-1/ PD-L1 expression in MS, we analyzed 98 patients by immunohistochemistry. Of these, 10.2% of cases had neoplastic tumour cells positive for PD-L1 (nPD-L1(+)). However, the rate of nPD-L1(+) was <5% (range: 0.27 to 2.97%). On the other hand, PD-L1 expression on 1 or more of stromal cells in the tumour microenvironment (miPD-L1)(+) was observed in 37.8% of cases. Because all nPD-L1 4 cases expressed PD-1 on less than 5% of tumour cells, we compared the miPD-L1(+) and miPD-L1(- )groups. There was a correlation between miPD-L1(+) status and the number of PD-1-expressing tumour -infiltrating lymphocytes (PD-1 . TILs; P = .0229). miPD-L1(+)was found to be associated with poorer overall survival and progression-free survival (P = .00392. P = .00261. respectively). Multivariate analysis also confirmed miPD-L1(+) to be an independent poor prognostic factor. In conclusion, our study indicated that the immunotherapy blocking the PD-1/PD-L1 pathway may improve the clinical outcome of MS.