Affiliations: [a] Department of Interventional Surgical Oncology, Cancer Hospital of Shandong Province, Shandong Academy of Medical Sciences, Jinan, Shandong, China | [b] Department of Hepatobiliary Surgery, National Cancer Center/National Clinical Research Center for Cancer/Cancer Hospital, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and Peking Union Medical College, Beijing, China | [c] Laboratory of Cell and Molecular Biology and State Key Laboratory of Molecular Oncology, National Cancer Center/National Clinical Research Center for Cancer/Cancer Hospital, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and Peking Union Medical College, Beijing, China
Correspondence:
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Corresponding authors: Mei Liu, Laboratory of Cell and Molecular Biology and State Key Laboratory of Molecular Oncology, National Cancer Center/National Clinical Research Center for Cancer, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and Peking Union Medical College, Panjiayuan, Chaoyang District, Beijing 100021, China. Tel.: +86 1087788487; E-mail: [email protected]. Liming Wang, Department of Hepatobiliary Surgery, National Cancer Center/National Clinical Research Center for Cancer/Cancer Hospital, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and Peking Union Medical College. 17 Panjiayuan Nanli Area, Chaoyang District, Beijing 100021, China. Tel.: +86 13161361180; E-mail: [email protected].
Note: [1] These authors contributed equally to this article.
Abstract: BACKGROUND: Identification of molecular markers that reflect the characteristics of the tumor microenvironment (TME) may be beneficial to predict the prognosis of post-operative hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) patients. OBJECTIVE AND METHODS: A total of 100 tissue samples from HCC patients were separately stained by immunohistochemistry to examine the expression levels of CD56, CD8α, CD68, FoxP3, CD31 and pan-Keratin. The prognostic values were analyzed by Cox regression and the Kaplan-Meier method. RESULTS: Univariate and multivariate logistic analysis showed that FoxP3 was the independent factor associated with microvascular invasion (MVI), tumor size and envelop invasion; CD68 was associated with envelope invasion and AFP. Kaplan-Meier survival curves revealed that CD68 and FoxP3 expression were significantly associated with relapse free survival (RFS) of HCC patients (P< 0.05). The ROC curve indicated that the combination of tumor number, MVI present and CD68 expression yielded a ROC curve area of 82.3% (86.36% specificity, 68.75% sensitivity) to evaluate the prognosis of HCC patients, which was higher than the classifier established by the combination of tumor number and MVI (78.8% probability, 63.64% specificity and 85.42% sensitivity). CONCLUSIONS: Our study indicated that CD68 and FoxP3 are associated with prognosis of HCC patients, and CD68 can be considered as a potential prognostic and predictive biomarker.
