Different aberrant expression pattern of immune checkpoint receptors in patients with PTCL and NK/T‐CL

Abstract Aim To better understand the T‐cell immunodeficiency status in patients with peripheral T‐cell lymphomas (PTCLs) and NK/T‐cell lymphomas (NK/T‐CLs), the T‐cell inhibitory receptors expression pattern was investigated. Methods The expression levels of programmed death 1 ( PD‐1 ), cytotoxic T lymphocyte‐associated antigen 4 ( CTLA‐4 ), B/T lymphocyte attenuator ( BTLA ), lymphocyte‐activation gene 3 ( LAG‐3 ), T‐cell immunoglobulin‐3 ( TIM‐3 ), T‐cell immunoglobulin and ITIM domain ( TIGIT ) genes were detected in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) from patients and healthy volunteers by quantitative real‐time‐PCR, the correlation between different gene expression levels was analyzed. Results Significantly higher expression of PD‐1, CTLA‐4, BTLA, LAG‐3, TIM‐3 and TIGIT can be observed as a common characteristic in patients with PTCL or NK/T‐CL. However, the coexpression pattern seemed different between subtypes. Their overexpression is also related to disease progression stage. Conclusion We first characterized the expression pattern of six T‐cell inhibitory receptor genes in PTCL and NK/T‐CL, which might work as immune biomarkers for evaluation the immunosuppression status and help to establish the precision targets of immunotherapy.