Pretreatment levels of circulating endothelial cells on efficacy of first-line therapy in patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer

Background:Elevated levels of circulating endothelial cells might reflect significant vascular damage and dysfunction.Recent studies have shown that circulating endothelial cells levels are related to therapeutic responses of tumors,and thus,could be used as an indicator to predict the efficacy of tumor treatments.The purpose of this study was to investigate the correlation and impact of endothelial cells with and on the efficacy of first-line therapy(platinum-based or tyrosine kinase inhibitor drugs treatments)for advanced non-small-cell lung cancer.Methods:We analyzed 45 inpatients who met the inclusion criteria of diagnosis with inoperable non-small-cell lung cancer stages III and IV,in the People’s Hospital of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region from January 2019 to January 2020.The flow cytometry technique was adopted to detect pretreatment levels of circulating endothelial cells in peripheral blood of patients with advanced non-small-cell lung cancer.The pretreatment peripheral blood was collected to analyze the relations of circulating endothelial cells with different clinical characteristics and efficacy.Results:The level of pretreatment circulating endothelial cells was significantly correlated with the efficacy of treatment(P<0.05)but irrelevant to the patient’s physical conditions,pathological type,tumor stage,and pretreatment serum carcinoembryonic antigen(P>0.05).The comparison between the groups of response(complete response+partial response)and nonresponse(stable disease+progressive disease)showed a significant difference in circulating endothelial cells count.Compared with low levels of circulating endothelial cells,a high level of circulating endothelial cells led to a poor efficacy(P<0.05).Conclusion:The level of pretreatment circulating endothelial cells significantly correlated with the efficiency of first-line therapy for non-small-cell lung cancer.Compared with low level of circulating endothelial cells,high level of circulating endothelial cells lead to poor efficacy.Therefore,circulating endothelial cell is indeed an effective indicator for predicting the efficacy of first-line therapy for advanced non-small-cell lung cancer.