Peripheral blood lymphocyte subsets predict the efficacy of TACE with or without PD-1 inhibitors in patients with hepatocellular carcinoma: a prospective clinical study

作者：Hongyu Wang, Huijie Huang, Ting Liu, Yaoming Chen, Jinwei Li, Jinwei Li, Min He, Jianxin Peng, Enyu Liang, Jiaping Li, Jiaping Li, Wendao Liu · 发表于：Frontiers in Immunology · 年份：2024 · DOI：10.3389/fimmu.2024.1325330 · 被引用次数：5 · 研究领域：Cancer Immunotherapy and Biomarkers、Hepatocellular Carcinoma Treatment and Prognosis、Cholangiocarcinoma and Gallbladder Cancer Studies

Background: Although peripheral blood lymphocyte subsets, particularly PD-1+ T cells, are promising prognostic indicators for patients with cancer. However, their clinical significance remains unclear. Methods: We prospectively enrolled 157 patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) treated with transcatheter arterial chemoembolization combined with or without PD-1 inhibitors. Twenty peripheral lymphocyte subsets and cytokines were analyzed. We analyzed the differences in PD-1+ T cells between patients treated with and without PD-1 inhibitors and their associations with tumor response, survival prognosis, and clinical features. Results: We found that the baseline CD8+PD-1+ and CD4+PD-1+ T-cell frequencies in patients who had received PD-1 inhibitors were lower than those in patients who had not received PD-1 inhibitors (p < 0.001). In the former patients, there were no differences in PD-1+ T-cell frequencies between the responder and non-responder subgroups (p > 0.05), whereas in the latter patients, the levels of CD8+PD-1+ T cells, CD4+PD-1+ T cells, and CD8+PD-1+/CD4+PD-1+ ratio did not predict tumor response, progression-free survival (PFS), or overall survival (OS) (p>0.05). Furthermore, in multivariate analysis of patients treated with or without PD-1 inhibitors revealed that the levels of CD8+CD38+ T cells (OR = 2.806, p = 0.006) were associated with tumor response, whereas those of CD8+CD28+ T cells (p = 0.038, p = 0.001) and natural killer (NK) cells (p = 0.001, p =...