Prognostic implications of CD30 expression in extranodal natural killer/T-cell lymphoma according to treatment modalities

Abstract

Extranodal natural killer/T-cell lymphoma (NKTCL) has aggressive behaviors and poor clinical outcomes. A monomethyl auristatin E-conjugated anti-CD30 antibody (brentuximab vedotin) was recently introduced to treat CD30-positive lymphomas. Thus we investigated the clinicopathological features and prognostic implications of CD30 expression in 72 patients with NKTCL. CD30-positive cases, defined as cases with CD30 expression in more than 1%, 5% and 25% of tumor cells as cut-off values (COVs), accounted for 40 (56%), 27 (38%) and 16 (22%) cases of NKTCL, respectively. CD30 expression was significantly higher in large/anaplastic cell-predominant NKTCL than in small/medium cell-predominant cases. CD30-positive NKTCL showed better responses to non-anthracycline-based therapy. CD30-positive NKTCL with COV of 25% showed a lower rate of relapse. Moreover, in patients treated with non-anthracycline-based chemotherapy, CD30 positivity with COV of 5% was significantly and independently associated with longer overall survival. CD30 may be useful as a prognostic factor and therapeutic target in NKTCL.

Keywords::

• CD30
• extranodal NK/T-cell lymphoma
• brentuximab vedotin
• prognosis
• EBV
• non-anthracycline-based chemotherapy

Potential conflict of interest

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This work was supported by a grant from the Basic Science Research Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF), funded by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (grant number: NRF-2013R1A1A2013210) and by a grant (0320130410) from the Seoul National University Hospital Research Fund.

Supplementary material available online

Tables 1–4 showing further data.