Recently, the program team led by Professors He Jianxing and Liang Wenhua engaged in lung cancer researches with the SKLRD has achieved a new progress in the micro-environment research of lung cancer. The research was published online in Translational Lung Cancer Research (IF:4.8) with a title of “Presence of intra-tumoral CD61+ megakaryocytes predicts poor prognosis in non-small cell lung cancer”. How myeloid cells or components such as neutrophile granulocytes and blood platelets promote lung cancer metastasis is an important research area, but no related reports on megakaryocyte have been found.

It’s discovered for the first time in the world that megakaryocytes existing in lung cancer may promote metastasis

Around 50% of the blood platelets in our body are generated in the pulmonary circulation, and lung cancer mainly receives blood supply from pulmonary circulation. The research has initially discovered that CD61+ megakaryocytes exist in the blood cells of cancer focus of 18.9% of lung cancer patients. The disease free survival (DFS) of patients with this kind of cells is obviously shorter (69.1 vs. 80.5 months; P=0.021). The multi-factor analysis indicates that the megakaryocytes in the tumor are the poor prognosis predictive factor of DFS (HR 1.351, P=0.065). This kind of prediction is more distinctive in patients of squamous lung cell cancer and N0, which implies that megakaryocyte may facilitate the lung cancer metastasis.

Besides, it has also been discovered that when the patients were divided into two groups <300 ×109/L and 300 ×109/L according to the level of blood platelets. Crossed with patients with positive megakaryocytes and patients with negative megakaryocytes, they were then divided into four sub-groups. The DFS curves of the four sub-groups can be clearly differentiated. The patients in the sub-group with positive megakaryocytes and the level of blood platelets ≥300 ×109/L were found with the worst prognosis, and the patients of the sub-group with negative megakaryocytes and a level of blood cells <300 ×109/L were found with the best prognosis. This indicates that the prognosis effect of CD61(+) megakaryocytes is independent from the level of blood platelets in veins. The system of megakaryocyte/blood platelet have two mechanisms of facilitating metastasis inside and outside the tumor in lung cancer, which can be inferred that in the in-tumor mechanism, the lung metastasis is facilitated by the blood platelets of megakaryocytes disrupted in the blood vessels of cancer. Meanwhile, it’s also discovered that lung cells may gather and immerse more megakaryocytes by raising SDF-1.