Low intratumoral genetic neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio (NLR) is associated with favorable tumor immune microenvironment and with survival in triple negative breast cancer (TNBC).
Yoshihisa Tokumaru, Masanori Oshi, Vijayashree Murthy, Wanqing Tian, Li Yan, Fernando A. Angarita, Masayuki Nagahashi, Nobuhisa Matsuhashi, Manabu Futamura, Kazuhiro Yoshida, Yasuo Miyoshi, Kazuaki Takabe
Abstract
expression levels in neither the METABRIC or TCGA cohorts. Intratumoral genetic NLR-high breast cancer was not associated with pathologic complete response (pCR) after neoadjuvant chemotherapy in 5 independent cohorts with different regimens. Despite these results, intratumoral genetic NLR-high TNBC demonstrated worse disease-free, disease-specific, and overall survival. Intratumoral genetic NLR-low TNBC enriched multiple immune-related gene sets, was associated with higher favorable immune-related scores and with a favorable TIME, whereas no gene sets enriched to NLR-high TNBC. In conclusion, intratumoral genetic NLR-low TNBC was associated with favorable TIME and with better survival.