The clinical implication of soluble PD-L1 (sPD-L1) in patients with breast cancer and its biological function in regulating the function of T lymphocyte

This work investigated the clinical prognostic implications and biological function of plasma soluble programmed cell death ligand 1 in breast cancer patients. Plasma sPD-L1 levels of recurrent/metastatic breast cancer patients were determined, and the association of sPD-L1 levels and metastatic progression-free survival and metastatic overall survival was assessed. The PD-L1 expression on breast cancer cells was analyzed by flow cytometry, and the level of sPD-L1 in the supernatant of breast cancer cells was determined by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. Furthermore, the effect of sPD-L1 on the proliferation and apoptosis of T lymphocytes was detected by WST-1 assay and flow cytometry. The plasma sPD-L1 levels in 208 patients with recurrent/metastatic breast cancer before receiving first-line rescue therapy were measured. The optimal cutoff value of plasma sPD-L1 for predicting disease progression was 8.774 ng/ml. Univariate and multivariate analyses identified high sPD-L1 level (≥ 8.774 ng/ml) and visceral metastasis were independent factors associated with poor prognosis. Relevance analysis showed that the plasma sPD-L1 level was weakly associated with some systemic inflammation markers, including white cell count (WBC), absolute monocyte count, and absolute neutrophil count. Furthermore, we found sPD-L1 could be found in supernatant of culture with breast cancer cell line expressing PD-L1 on the cell surface and inhibit T lymphocyte function, playing a negative regulatory role in cellular immunity. sPD-L1 was a good tumor predictive maker in breast cancer and it may play a potentially important role in immune tolerance. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s00262-021-02898-4.