ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: Dose-dense sequential (dds) chemotherapy has changed the clinical outcome of patients with early breast cancer (BC). To investigate the impact of dose intensity (DI) in the adjuvant setting of BC, this observational trial (HE 10/10) was conducted assessing the long-term survival outcome, safety and toxicity of a currently widely used chemotherapeutic regimen. In addition, the prognostic significance of tumor infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) and infiltrating CD8+ lymphocytes were also evaluated in the same cohort. PATIENTS AND METHODS: Totally, 1054 patients were prospectively enrolled in the current study with 1024 patients being eligible, while adequate tissue was available for 596 of them. TILs, CD8+ lymphocytes in intratumoral areas in contact with malignant cells (iCD8), CD8+ lymphocytes in tumor stroma (sCD8) as well as the total number of CD8+ lymphocytes within the tumor area (total CD8) were assessed by immunohistochemistry. RESULTS: Within a median follow-up of 125.18 months, a total of 200 disease-free survival (DFS) events (19.5%) were reported. Importantly, the 10-year DFS and OS rates were 78.4% (95% CI 75.0-81.5) and 81.7% (95% CI 79.0-84.1), respectively. Interestingly, higher CD8+ T cells as well as TILs in the tumor microenvironment were associated with an improved long-term survival outcome. CONCLUSIONS: In conclusion, this study confirms the significance of dds adjuvant chemotherapeutic regimen in terms of long-term survival outcome, safety and toxicity as well as the prognostic significance of TILs and infiltrating CD8+ lymphocytes in BC patients with early-stage disease.