Infiltration of CD1a-positive dendritic cells in advanced laryngeal cancer correlates with unfavorable outcomes post-laryngectomy

BACKGROUND: The prognosis of advanced laryngeal cancer is unfavorable despite advances in multidisciplinary therapy. Dendritic cells (DCs) play a central role in antitumor immunity. Tumor-infiltrating CD1a(+) DCs have been reported to be associated with clinical outcomes in carcinomas of various organs, but the clinical impact of CD1a(+) DCs in laryngeal cancer remains to be unequivocally established. METHODS: We retrospectively analyzed the cases of 57 patients with Stage III or IV laryngeal cancer who underwent a total laryngectomy. Immunohistochemistry detection of CD1a, S100 and CD8 was performed on representative resected specimens. CD1a(+) DCs, S100(+) DCs and CD8(+) cytotoxic T-lymphocytes (CTLs) were evaluated, and the cases divided into high and low groups according to the cut-off of the median values for each of these 3 parameters. RESULTS: Compared to the CD1a-low group, the CD1a-high group had more advanced cases and showed significantly worse disease-specific survival (DSS) (P = 0.008) and overall survival (OS) (P = 0.032). The analyses of S100 DCs and CD8(+) CTLs revealed no significant impact on clinical outcomes. However, multivariate analysis revealed that infiltration of CD1a(+) DCs was an independent unfavorable prognostic factor for both DSS (P = 0.009) and OS (P = 0.013). CONCLUSIONS: Our results demonstrated that the infiltration of CD1a(+) DCs was associated with unfavorable clinical outcomes in patients with advanced laryngeal cancer who underwent a total laryngectomy as the initial treatment.