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Purpose: Brain metastasis is the most common complication of brain cancer; nevertheless, primary lung cancer accounts for approximately 20%-40% of brain metastases cases. Surgical resection is the preferred treatment for brain metastases. However, no studies have reported the outcome of surgical resection of brain metastases from non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) in the People's Republic of China. Moreover, the optimal treatment for primary NSCLC in patients with synchronous brain metastases is hitherto controversial. Patients and methods: We retrospectively analyzed the cases of NSCLC patients with brain metastases who underwent neurosurgical resection at the Sun Yat-sen University Cancer Center, and assessed the efficacy of surgical resection and the necessity of aggressive treatment for primary NSCLC in synchronous brain metastases patients. Results: A total of 62 patients, including 47 men and 15 women, with brain metastases from NSCLC were enrolled in the study. The median age at the time of craniotomy was 54 years (range 29-76 years). At the final follow-up evaluation, 50 patients had died. The median OS time was 15.1 months, and the survival rates were 70% and 37% at 1 and 2 years, respectively. The median OS time of synchronous brain metastases patients was 12.5 months. Univariate analysis revealed that radical treatment of primary NSCLC was positively correlated with survival, and it was an independent prognostic factor in the multivariate analysis. Conclusion: Surgical resection is an effective treatment for brain metastases. Besides craniotomy, radical therapy is necessary for the management of primary NSCLC in patients with synchronous brain metastases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: B7-H4, a member of the inhibitory B7 family, is shown to have a profound inhibitory effect on the proliferation, activation, cytokine secretion, and development of cytotoxicity of T cells and may be involved in immune evasion in cancer patients. Although B7-H4 expression has been detected in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), there are no published reports on the expression of B7-H4 in brain metastases from NSCLC. Methods: We examined the expression of B7-H4 by immunohistochemistry in 49 cases of brain metastatic NSCLC, 18 cases of matched primary NSCLC, and 20 cases of NSCLC patients who had neither brain metastases nor other distant metastases. Results: B7-H4 was highly expressed in 20 (40.8%) out of 49 brain metastases and two (11.1%) out of 18 matched primary tumors. The expression of B7-H4 in brain metastases appeared to be significantly higher than their matched primary tumors (P = 0.016). We also found that patients with high B7-H4 expression in their primary NSCLC have a higher risk of developing brain metastases (P = 0.022). Univariate analyses showed that median overall survival was significantly shorter in patients with high B7-H4 expression in brain metastases (P = 0.002). Multivariate analyses showed that B7-H4 was a significant independent prognostic indicator (P = 0.003). Conclusion: NSCLC patients with high B7-H4 expression may benefit from aggressive treatment and close surveillance. Furthermore, our study suggests that B7-H4 may play an important role in the metastatic process of NSCLC and is promising to be a new immune checkpoint molecule for future antitumoral immunotherapy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]