Prognostic role of CD68 and CD163 of Tumor-associated macrophages in Adult Hodgkin lymphoma

Abstract

Classical Hodgkin lymphoma is considered a highly curable disease; however, 20% of patients cannot be cured with standard first-line chemotherapy and have a dismal outcome. A subset of patients with advanced classical Hodgkin lymphoma is refractory to standard therapies. Therefore, it is relevant to identify new biologically‐based prognostic markers. Recently, tumor‐associated macrophages have been proposed as a factor that predicts survival, although contradictory results have been reported. Two different antibodies against macrophage-associated antigens, namely CD68 and CD163, were studied in several studies before. While CD68 is reported to be a pan-macrophage marker with less specificity, CD163 expression is considered more specific for tumor-infiltrating macrophages. Here, we present a Prospective study to identify the impact of Tumor-associated macrophages invasion of the microenvironment in Adult Classical Hodgkin lymphoma patients with advanced stage disease (III& IV), to be correlated with the various diagnostic and prognostic factors, as well as the response to therapy. We analyzed two of macrophage markers (CD68& CD163), using Immunohistochemistry in 20 patients with advanced stage classical Hodgkin Lymphoma.