Prognostic significance of immunological evaluation in colorectal cancer

According to the concept that tumour establishment and progression generally reflects a malfunction of the immune system, we have investigated the prognostic significance of immunological parameters in correlation to stage progression in colorectal cancer. In patients and healthy subjects as control group, we determined: serum levels of interleukin (IL)-2, interferon (IFN) gamma, IL-4, IL-6, IL-7, IL-8, tumor necrosis factor (TNF) alpha cytokines and soluble IL-2 receptor (sIL-2R), CD30 (sCD30), ICAM-1 (sICAM-1) molecules, phenotype of peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC); PBMC proliferative response to IL-2, IL-4 and anti-CD3 monoclonal antibody (anti-CD3) variously combined. Our results show that, compared to healthy controls, the group of all patients, but interestingly, also the groups of patients at the various stages of the disease, seem to have different values of these immunological parameters. Since tumour invasion and metastasis are the major causes of cancer treatment failure the early recognition of preinvasive states could lead to an improvement in prognosis. For this purpose our results might be especially useful in making prognostic and diagnostic indices in this neoplasy to identify patients at risk for tumour detention and the patient condition concerning disease progression by a non-invasive method. Moreover, this evaluation which contributes to identify the damage in the patient immune response to tumor could be helpful in identifying the therapeutic substances which might switch this response from being unproductive to productive. Thus, our data leads us to indicate that it might be possible to define reliable prognostic and diagnostic indices in colorectal cancer from the extension of this immunological study by the evaluation of these and other parameters.