Different aberrant expression pattern of immune checkpoint receptors in patients with PTCL and NK/T-CL

To better understand the T-cell immunodeficiency status in patients with peripheral T-cell lymphomas (PTCLs) and NK/T-cell lymphomas (NK/T-CLs), the T-cell inhibitory receptors expression pattern was investigated.

The expression levels of programmed death 1 (PD-1), cytotoxic T lymphocyte-associated antigen 4 (CTLA-4), B/T lymphocyte attenuator (BTLA), lymphocyte-activation gene 3 (LAG-3), T-cell immunoglobulin-3 (TIM-3), T-cell immunoglobulin and ITIM domain (TIGIT) genes were detected in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) from patients and healthy volunteers by quantitative real-time-PCR, the correlation between different gene expression levels was analyzed.

Significantly higher expression of PD-1, CTLA-4, BTLA, LAG-3, TIM-3 and TIGIT can be observed as a common characteristic in patients with PTCL or NK/T-CL. However, the coexpression pattern seemed different between subtypes. Their overexpression is also related to disease progression stage.

We first characterized the expression pattern of six T-cell inhibitory receptor genes in PTCL and NK/T-CL, which might work as immune biomarkers for evaluation the immunosuppression status and help to establish the precision targets of immunotherapy.