Favorable immune signature in CLL patients, defined by antigen-specific T-cell responses, might prevent second skin cancers

Abstract

The course of chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), inducing an immunosuppressed state that also affects T cells as central components of adaptive immunity, predisposes patients to develop second malignancies with skin cancer being the most common. Recently, we found that prevalence of memory T cells with specificity for CLL-associated antigens defined by mass spectrometry-based immunopeptidome analysis correlated with a significant survival benefit. Here, we analyzed our CLL patient cohort for second skin (pre)malignancies and found a significantly lower incidence of skin cancer in the patients showing immune responses to CLL-associated antigens. Surprisingly, CLL-associated antigen-specific immune responses did not associate with clinical characteristics including leukocyte, neutrophil, and thrombocyte count, hemoglobin, immunoglobulin levels, or CD8⁺ and CD4⁺ T-cell immune status. Our data indicate that the CLL-specific immune signature of a given patient, defined by antigen-specific T-cell responses, might represent an independent marker to identify CLL patients susceptible for the development of skin malignancies.

Keywords:

• Chronic lymphocytic leukemia
• T-cell response
• antigen
• skin cancer
• second malignancies

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the German Cancer Consortium (DKTK), the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG STI 704/1-1), the Wilhelm Sander-Stiftung (Nr. 2016.177.1), and the European Union (ERC AdG339842 Mutaediting).

Potential conflict of interest

Disclosure forms provided by the authors are available with the full text of this article online at https:doi.org/10.1080/10428194.2017.1403022.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the German Cancer Consortium (DKTK), the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG STI 704/1-1), the Wilhelm Sander-Stiftung (Nr. 2016.177.1), and the European Union (ERC AdG339842 Mutaediting).