Characterization of soluble PD-L1 in pleural effusions of mesothelioma patients: potential implications in the immune response and prognosis

Purpose Programmed death-ligand 1 (PD-L1) protein plays a central role in the antitumor immune response, and appears to be a predictor of prognosis and efficacy for PD-L1 and programmed death 1 (PD-1) blockade therapy. The immunoregulatory role and prognostic impact of PD-L1 soluble form (sPD-L1) have been investigated in biological fluids of patients with different tumors. In malignant pleural mesothelioma (MPM), circulating sPD-L1 has been recently reported in patients’ sera, but no data are available in pleural effusions (PE). In our study, we evaluated the baseline expression levels of sPD-L1 in PE from 84 MPM patients and correlated them with PD-L1-status in matched tumors and patients’ overall survival (OS). Methods sPD-L1 in PE was determined by ELISA and tumor PD-L1 by immunohistochemistry. Association of sPD-L1 with OS was estimated using the Cox regression model. Results We observed that sPD-L1 was variably expressed in all the PE and tended to be higher (by 30%) in patients with PD-L1-positive tumors (cut-off ≥ 1% stained cells) as compared to patients with PD-L1-negative tumors (geometric mean ratio = 1.28, P value = 0.288). sPD-L1 levels were significantly higher than those of sPD-1 ( P value = 0.001) regardless of the MPM histotypes and they were positively correlated ( r = 0.50, P value < 0.001). Moreover, high PE sPD-L1 concentrations were associated with a trend towards increased OS (hazard ratio 0.79, 95% CL 0.62–1.01, P value = 0.062). Conclusions Our study documents the presence of sPD-L1 in PE of MPM patients, and suggests its possible biological and prognostic role in MPM.