Studies of Phenotypic and Functional Characteristics of Circulating Neutrophil Subpopulations in Patients With Lung Cancer

The objective is to study the phenotypic, functional and metabolomic characteristics of neutrophils circulating subpopulations in lung cancer patients, and to compare them to a control group of healthy volunteers. A blood sample will be taken before the first treatment session for the lung cancer patient and a second blood sample will be taken during the first evaluation visit. The investigators hypothesize that there may be different circulating neutrophil subpopulations in patients with metastatic non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) involved in tumor progression and resistance to immunotherapy.

Immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICI) have been shown to be effective in metastatic lung cancer. Unfortunately, 80% of patients do not respond and show rapid disease progression. Identifying predictive biomarkers of response is essential for early adaptation of management. Circulating lymphocytes and neutrophils represent a biomarker (NLR), predictive of immunotherapy response, in particular via the measurement of the neutrophils /lymphocyte ratio. Some preclinical work suggests a role for circulating neutrophil subpopulations like MDSC (myeloid derived suppressor cells) in ICI resistance. Certain circulating neutrophil subpopulations are thought to promote tumor progression, angiogenesis and metastasis with immunosuppressive activity. Identifying these pro-tumor subpopulations could predict the response to ICI and could be a potential therapeutic target. Our goal is to characterize the circulating neutrophil subpopulations of lung cancer patients and correlate these characteristics with response and survival phenotypically and functionally.