TY - JOUR AU - Fernandez, Sandra V. AU - MacFarlane, Alexander W. AU - Jillab, Mowafaq AU - Arisi, Maria F. AU - Yearley, Jennifer AU - Annamalai, Lakshmanan AU - Gong, Yulan AU - Cai, Kathy Q. AU - Alpaugh, R. Katherine AU - Cristofanilli, Massimo AU - Campbell, Kerry S. PY - 2020 DA - 2020/12/02 TI - Immune phenotype of patients with stage IV metastatic inflammatory breast cancer JO - Breast Cancer Research SP - 134 VL - 22 IS - 1 AB - Inflammatory breast cancer (IBC) is a rare but aggressive carcinoma characterized by severe erythema and edema of the breast, with many patients presenting in advanced metastatic disease. The “inflammatory” nature is not due to classic immune-mediated inflammation, but instead results from tumor-mediated blockage of dermal lymphatic ducts. Previous work has shown that expression of PD-L1 on tumor cells can suppress T cell activation in triple-negative (TN) non-IBC breast cancer. In the present work, we investigated immune parameters in peripheral blood of metastatic IBC patients to determine whether cellular components of the immune system are altered, thereby contributing to pathogenesis of the disease. These immune parameters were also compared to PD-1 and PD-L1 expression in IBC tumor biopsies. SN - 1465-542X UR - https://doi.org/10.1186/s13058-020-01371-x DO - 10.1186/s13058-020-01371-x ID - Fernandez2020 ER -