Prediction of Recurrence and Survival in Hepatocellular Carcinoma Based on Two Cox Models Mainly Determined by FoxP3+ Regulatory T Cells

Abstract

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is an aggressive disease with poor prognosis and limited methods to predict patient survival. Immune cells infiltrating tumors is known to impact clinical outcome. Here, we investigated the prognostic significance of immune infiltration within the tumor microenvironment in 245 specimens from two independent cohorts by immunohistochemical analyses. A Cox regression model was constructed using a training cohort and validated in an independent cohort. The diagnostic accuracy was evaluated by receiver operating characteristic curve. The activation, function, and chemotaxis of intratumoral regulatory T cells (Treg) were analyzed using flow cytometry, quantitative PCR, and chemotaxis assay. We identified that the proportion of

Prognostic significance of regulatory T lymphocytes in patients with hepatocellular carcinoma

“…Tregs proportion among CD4 + lymphocytes is also widely measured, and our two included primary studies adopted this value. Interestingly, Lin et al (2013) reported that proportion of FoxP3 + cells but not its absolute number was negatively related to prognosis. When excluding studies using Tregs proportion instead of count, increased Tregs accumulation remained associated with shortened survival.…”

“…Our search strategy yielded 573 primary articles, of which 16 were eventually identified fulfilling the eligibility criteria (Fu et al, 2007;Gao et al, 2007;Kobayashi et al, 2007;Sasaki et al, 2008;Cai et al, 2009;Ju et al, 2009a;2009b;Zhou et al, 2009;2010;Chen et al, 2011;Shen et al, 2011;Huang et al, 2012;Mathai et al, 2012;Wang et al, 2012;Lin et al, 2013) (Fig. 1).…”

The correlations between IL-17 vs. Th17 cells and cancer patient survival: a systematic review

“…21,29 Four studies did not observe a significant correlation between total IL-17 C cells in the tumor and survival. 22,23,53,54 Again the scoring in 2 of these 4 studies had been performed in hotspot or dense lymphocytic infiltrate areas, while only 3 of the 18 studies reporting on a negative correlation had focused on hotspots. Three more studies did not focus on IL-17 C tumor-infiltrating immune cells and are included with their reported correlations in Table 1 for completeness, but not in the quantitative analyses.…”

Tolerance--Is It Worth It?

“…That is, will Tregs that suppress rejection of liver transplant also suppress antiviral responses to the hepatitis virus that caused the disease (Dolganiuc and Szabo 2008)? Or will they suppress antitumor responses to hepatocellular carcinoma present in the liver explant (Lin et al 2013)? We know that Treg are capable of bystander suppression .…”