Adjuvant chemotherapy-Radiotherapy-Chemotherapy sandwich protocol in resectable soft tissue sarcoma: An updated single-center analysis of 104 cases.

Adjuvant therapy of local soft tissue sarcomas (STS) after wide surgical excision still is a topic under controversial scientific debate. In this single center report we have offered an adjuvant "sandwich" therapy protocol consisting of 4 cycles of doxorubicin (75 mg/m2 i.v. over 1 h on day 1) followed by ifosfamide (5 g/m2 i.v. over 24 h starting on day 1) and local radiotherapy scheduled between chemotherapy cycles 2 and 3 to 104 consecutive patients after wide surgical excision (R0) of histologically proven high-grade STS. After a mean follow-up of 39 months (range 5-194 months) relapse free survival (RFS) at 2 and 5 years was 68.1% (95% CI, 58.5-77.7%) and 61.2% (95% CI, 50.4-71.6%). When analyzing the 82 STS cases of the extremities only 2- and 5-year RFS was 74.0% (95% CI, 64.0-84.0%) and 65.3% (95% CI, 53.7-76.9%). By intent-to-treat analysis, the overall survival (OS) at 2 years was 87.3% (95% CI, 80.5-94.1%) and 75.6% (95% CI, 65.2-86.0%) at 5 years, while OS for STS of the extremities only cohort was 90.5% (95% CI, 83.7-97.3%) and 79.0% (95% CI, 68.4-89.6%), respectively. Tolerability of the treatment was good. This analysis demonstrates the feasibility of adjuvant chemoradiotherapy and reflects the results of the long lasting intensive multidisciplinary team approach at our "high-volume" sarcoma center. The long-term survival in our patients is among the highest reported and the low local and distant recurrence rate in high-risk STS is at least comparable to the published data.

PD-1 and PD-L1 Expression in NSCLC Indicate a Favorable Prognosis in Defined Subgroups.

BACKGROUND: Immunotherapy can become a crucial therapeutic option to improve prognosis for lung cancer patients. First clinical trials with therapies targeting the programmed cell death receptor PD-1 and its ligand PD-L1 have shown promising results in several solid tumors. However, in lung cancer the diagnostic, prognostic and predictive value of these immunologic factors remains unclear. METHOD: The impact of both factors was evaluated in a study collective of 321 clinically well-annotated patients with non-small lung cancer (NSCLC) using immunohistochemistry. RESULTS: PD-1 expression by tumor infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) was found in 22%, whereas tumor cell associated PD-L1 expression was observed in 24% of the NSCLC tumors. In Fisher's exact test a positive correlation was found for PD-L1 and Bcl-xl protein expression (p = 0.013). Interestingly, PD-L1 expression on tumor cells was associated with improved overall survival in pulmonary squamous cell carcinomas (SCC, p = 0.042, log rank test), with adjuvant therapy (p = 0.017), with increased tumor size (pT2-4, p = 0.039) and with positive lymph node status (pN1-3, p = 0.010). These observations were confirmed by multivariate cox regression models. CONCLUSION: One major finding of our study is the identification of a prognostic implication of PD-L1 in subsets of NSCLC patients with pulmonary SCC, with increased tumor size, with a positive lymph node status and NSCLC patients who received adjuvant therapies. This study provides first data for immune-context related risk stratification of NSCLC patients. Further studies are necessary both to confirm this observation and to evaluate the predictive value of PD-1 and PD-L1 in NSCLC in the context of PD-1 inhibition.