Assessment of programmed death ligand 1 (PD-L1) expression in cervical intraepithelial neoplasia and carcinoma cervix

Carcinoma cervix is a significant public health issue in low- and middle-income nations. Despite the availability of aggressive cytological screening tests and increasing accessibility of the Human Papilloma Virus vaccine, a significant proportion of patients in our country still present with locally advanced cervical cancer. The objective of this study was to estimate the prevalence of programmed death ligand 1 (PD-L1) immunoexpression in cervical intraepithelial neoplasia and carcinoma cervix and study the distribution of clinicopathological features and recurrence of cervical cancer with respect to PD-L1 status.

A total of 140 patients were included in this multicentric ambidirectional study. Immunohistochemical analysis for PD-L1 was performed on paraffin-embedded, formalin-fixed sections using 22C3 PharmDx assay (Dako) and tumour proportion score was calculated. PD-L1 expression status concerning the distribution of clinicopathological features was further studied.

This study included 133 cases of cervical carcinoma and 7 cases of cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (140 cases), with a prevalence of PDL1 positivity in 31.4% of cases with 15% (n = 21) tumours high positive, 16.4% (n = 23) low positive and 68.6% (n = 96) negative for PD-L1. It was observed that all cases with PD-L1 positivity were characterized as squamous cell carcinoma. The mean age of subjects was 56.74 ± 11.52 years. PD-L1 high positivity was observed in 26.7% of individuals in the age group >70 years, 21.7% of grade 3 tumours, 11.4% of tumours exceeding 4 cm in size, and 33.3% of cases showing recurrence. PD-L1 immunoexpression did not demonstrate a significant association with the patient's age, tumour grade and stage, as well as recurrence.

It is envisaged that anti-PD-L1 immunotherapy could show promising antitumour activity and early survival rates among patients with cervical squamous cell carcinoma.