PD-L1 and c-MET expression and survival in patients with small cell lung cancer

BACKGROUND Blocking the binding between the PD-1 and PD-L1 has been reported to produce antitumor responses. The MET/HGF axis appears to be another signaling pathway frequently altered in small cell lung cancer (SCLC). Our study was aimed to investigate the expression and prognostic roles of PD-L1 and c-MET in SCLC. METHODS The expression levels of PD-L1 and c-MET were evaluated by immunohistochemical analysis in 83 SCLC specimens. Survival analysis was performed using the Kaplan-Meier method. RESULTS Of the SCLC specimens, 51.8% and 25.3% exhibited positivity for PD-L1 and c-MET, respectively. Higher PD-L1 expression in tumor specimens was significantly correlated with a limited disease (LD) stage, normal levels of serum lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) and neuron-specific enolase (NSE). No association was found between the levels of c-MET and PD-L1 expression or between c-MET expression and other clinical characteristics. SCLC patients with PD-L1-positive tumors showed significantly longer overall survival (OS) than patients with PD-L1-negative tumors (17.0 vs 9.0, p=0.018). Conversely, those with positive c-MET expression exhibited a shorter OS trend (12.0 vs 15.0, p=0.186). However, sub-analysis of LD-stage patients revealed longer OS among the c-MET-negative group (25.0 vs 14.0; p=0.011). The OS of patients with positivity for both PD-L1 and c-MET showed no significant difference compared with other patients (p=0.17). According to multivariate analyses, neither PD-L1 nor c-MET immunoreactivity was a prognostic factor. CONCLUSION Expression of PD-L1 was correlated with LD stage and might serve as a prognostic for better OS in SCLC patients. In LD-stage patients, high c-MET expression might be predictive of a poor outcome.