Baseline serum TARC levels predict therapy outcome in patients with Hodgkin lymphoma

Hodgkin lymphoma (HL) has become one of the best curable cancers. However, better biomarkers are needed for outcome prediction that would allow protecting patients from over- or under-dosing of treatment. Thymus and activation-regulated chemokine/CCL17 (TARC) is highly and specifically elevated in this disease and has been proposed as possible biomarker in HL patients. In this study, we show that pretreatment TARC levels were associated with established clinical risk factors and predictive for response to treatment in a large cohort of HL patients treated in clinical trials by the German Hodgkin Study Group. Moreover, TARC levels also significantly contributed to a novel multivariate model predicting treatment response. These data clearly suggest an important role for this chemokine as biomarker in HL.