S100β protein in peripheral blood may predict progressive disease during interleukin-2 based immunotherapy in patients with metastatic melanoma

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Abstract
The aim of this study was to evaluate the biological variation in the serum level of S100beta protein in untreated patients with metastatic melanoma and to use this variation to subsequently evaluate serum levels as a method of monitoring objective response to interleukin-2 (IL2) based treatment. Such an approach has not, to our knowledge, been published previously. Consecutive blood samples were collected before, during and after treatment and in the follow-up period from 66 patients treated with IL2-based immunotherapy. In 11 of these patients, a further three samples were drawn on each of 3 days prior to treatment to evaluate the variation in S100beta. This variation was later used to distinguish between increased, unchanged or decreased S100beta levels during treatment. We observed a significant association between changes in S100beta levels and clinical outcome after the first and second treatment cycles. All responding patients had a decline in S100beta levels or normal values during the first cycle. Changes in S100beta levels after the first cycle and the type of treatment were independent predictive factors for the clinical outcome in multivariate analysis. In conclusion, increasing S100beta values were independently associated with progressive disease, and our data suggest that significant changes in S100beta levels may be valuable for monitoring and predicting clinical outcome during IL2-based immunotherapy and chemoimmunotherapy.