Pre-treatment peripheral blood immunophenotyping and response to neoadjuvant chemotherapy in operable breast cancer

Tumor immune infiltration and peripheral blood immune signatures have prognostic and predictive value in breast cancer. Whether distinct peripheral blood immune phenotypes are associated with response to neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NAC) remains understudied.

Peripheral blood mononuclear cells from 126 breast cancer patients enrolled in a prospective clinical trial (NCT02022202) were analyzed using Cytometry by time-of-flight with a panel of 29 immune cell surface protein markers. Kruskal-Wallis tests or Wilcoxon rank-sum tests were used to evaluate differences in immune cell subpopulations according to breast cancer subtype and response to NAC.

There were 122 evaluable samples: 47 (38.5%) from patients with hormone receptor-positive, 39 (32%) triple-negative (TNBC), and 36 (29.5%) HER2-positive breast cancer. The relative abundances of pre-treatment peripheral blood T, B, myeloid, NK, and unclassified cells did not differ according to breast cancer subtype. In TNBC, higher pre-treatment myeloid cells were associated with lower pathologic complete response (pCR) rates. In hormone receptor-positive breast cancer, lower pre-treatment CD8 + naïve and CD4 + effector memory cells re-expressing CD45RA (T_EMRA) T cells were associated with more extensive residual disease after NAC. In HER2 + breast cancer, the peripheral blood immune phenotype did not differ according to NAC response.

Pre-treatment peripheral blood immune cell populations (myeloid in TNBC; CD8 + naïve T cells and CD4 + T_EMRA cells in luminal breast cancer) were associated with response to NAC in early-stage TNBC and hormone receptor-positive breast cancers, but not in HER2 + breast cancer.

NCT02022202 . Registered 20 December 2013.