Infused Autograft Lymphocyte to Monocyte Ratio and Survival in Classical Hodgkin Lymphoma

Infused autograft absolute lymphocyte count (A-ALC) is a prognostic factor for survival post-autologous peripheral hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (APHSCT) for lymphoma. Myeloid-derived suppressor cells (MDSCs) affect tumor growth by suppression of host anti-tumor immunity. Thus, we set out to investigate if the infused autograft lymphocyte /monocyte ratio (A-LMR), as a biomarker of host immunity (i.e., lymphocytes) and MDSCs (i.e., monocytes), affects survival post-APHSCT in patients with classical Hodgkin lymphoma (cHL). Only patients that collected their stem cells through the peripheral blood were included in the study. From 1994 to 2012, 183 cHL patients qualified for the study. The 183 patients were randomly divided into a training set (n = 122) and a validation set (n = 61). Receiver operating characteristic and area under the curve (AUC) identified an A-LMR ≥ 1 as the best cut-off value (AUC = 0.8, p < 0.01) and validated by the k-fold cross-validation (AUC = 0.8) in the training set. Multivariate analysis showed A-LMR to be an independent prognostic factor for survival in the training set. Patients with an A-LMR ≥ 1.0 experienced a superior overall survival (OS) versus patients with an A-LMR < 1.0 (median OS was not reached vs 40.4 months, 5-year OS rates of 86% (95 CI, 72%-93%) vs 43% (95 CI, 28-58 %), p < 0.0001, respectively) in the training set. In the validation set, an A-LMR ≥ 1 showed a median OS of not reached vs 41.8 months for an A-LMR < 1, 5 year OS rates of 90% (95 CI, 73%-97%) vs 48% (95 CI, 29-68%), p < 0.0001, respectively. A-LMR provides a platform to engineer an immunocompetent autograft to improve clinical outcomes in cHL patients undergoing APHSCT.