| Summary: | Guoming Hu,1 Kefang Zhong,1 Wei Chen,1 Shimin Wang,2 Liming Huang1 1Department of General Surgery (Breast and Thyroid Surgery), 2Department of Nephrology, Shaoxing People’s Hospital (Shaoxing Hospital, Zhejiang University School of Medicine), Zhejiang, China Background: Cancer-associated fibroblasts (CAFs) are a heterogeneous population, and different subpopulations play differential roles in tumor microenvironment. However, the prognostic role of podoplanin-positive CAFs in human lung cancer still remains controversial. Methods: Herein, we performed a meta-analysis including 12 published studies with 1,802 patients identified from PubMed and EBSCO to assess the prognostic impact of podoplanin-positive CAFs in lung cancer patients. Results: We found that podoplanin+ fibroblast infiltration significantly decreased overall survival (OS), disease-free survival (DFS), and progression-free survival in patients. In stratified analyses, podoplanin+ fibroblast infiltration was significantly associated with worse OS and DFS in both squamous cell carcinoma and adenocarcinoma of lung. In addition, high density of podoplanin-positive CAFs significantly correlated with unfavorable clinicopathological features such as lymph node metastasis, and lymphatic, vascular, and pleural invasion of patients. Conclusion: Podoplanin+ fibroblast infiltration leads to worse clinical outcome in lung cancer patients, implicating that it is a valuable prognostic biomarker and targeting it may have a potential for effective treatment. Keywords: podoplanin-positive cancer-associated fibroblasts, worse outcome, lung cancer, meta-analysis
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