Abstract
V-domain Ig suppressor of T-cell activation (VISTA), which belongs to the B7 family and is expressed predominantly on hematopoetic cells, myeloid, granulocytic and T cells, can suppresses T-cell activation in vivo and vitro. The blockade of VISTA has displayed brilliant results in certain murine tumor models. But to date, little is known about the expression and impact of VISTA in human cervical cancer (CC). To fill this gap of information, we systemically investigated the expression of VISTA on tumor cells, intratumoral immune cells (ICs) and vascular endothelial cells (VECs) in a group of patients with CC by performing immunohistochemical analysis. The associations between VISTA expression and different clinicopathologic features were evaluated using Fisher's exact test, and the analysis of overall survival in different groups was performed by the construction of Kaplan-Meier models. The results indicated that high expression of VISTA on ICs or VECs was significantly related to advanced tumor stage and the lymph node metastasis (LNM) of CC. Furthermore, we performed multivariate Cox regression analysis, which showed that there was no association between VISTA expression and the 5-year overall survival rate, and LNM was the only independent predicting factor of poor prognosis for CC.