Vessels That Encapsulate Tumor Clusters (VETC) Predict cTACE Response in Hepatocellular Carcinoma

作者：Chun-Yu Lin, Yuan He, Mengnan Liu, Aihua Wu, Jing Zhang, Shurong Li, Shuqi Li, Qinghua Cao, Fang Liu · 发表于：Journal of Hepatocellular Carcinoma · 年份：2023 · DOI：10.2147/jhc.s395903 · 被引用次数：18 · 研究领域：Hepatocellular Carcinoma Treatment and Prognosis、Angiogenesis and VEGF in Cancer、Vascular Tumors and Angiosarcomas

Background: To investigate the correlation between hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) pathological types and conventional transarterial chemoembolization (cTACE), and to evaluate the predictive value of the pathological types for efficacy of cTACE. Methods: We investigated 186 naive HCC patients from 2 hospitals, including 63 patients with recurrence after surgical resection, and 123 unresectable cases, who underwent at least one cTACE procedure as the first treatment. All patients were histologically diagnosed with HCC by surgical resection and/or liver biopsy. Lipiodol deposition rate, ORR (objective response rate), PFS (progression-free survival), OS (overall survival) were compared among different HCC pathological types. Results: This study evaluated 186 naive HCC patients and 189 tumor nodules. Vessels that encapsulate tumor clusters (VETC), macrotrabecular-massive (MTM), CK19-positive types were identified in 38% (72/189), 40% (76/189), and 28% (53/189) of the whole cohort, respectively. VETC, MTM and CK19-negative HCCs derived significantly better lipiodol deposition rate and ORR. cTACE prolonged the PFS of VETC and CK19-negative HCCs compared with non-VETC and CK19-positive HCCs in the recurrence, liver biopsy and combining whole cohorts, whereas the OSs of different pathological types were not significantly different. Multivariate analysis showed that VETC (OR, 4.671, 95% CI [1.954, 11.166], P<0.001) and CK19-positive type (OR, 0.127, 95% CI [0.044, 0.362], P<0.001) were...