A. Trailin, L. Červenková, F. Ambrozkiewicz, E. Ali, P. Kasi, R. Pálek, P. Hošek, V. Třeška, O. Daum, Z. Tonar, V. Liška and K. Hemminki: T- and B-cells in the inner invasive margin of hepatocellular carcinoma after resection associate with favorable prognosis. Cancers (Basel). 2022 Jan 25;14(3):604. doi: 10.3390/cancers14030604.
Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is one of the most common cancers in the world, which frequently recurs after the curative resection. Several options to predict recurrence of HCC have been proposed, however, their prognostic ability is limited. The purpose of this research was to determine test the hypothesis that distribution and numbers of T- and B-lymphocytes in different regions of resected tumor may have different prognostic significance. In this retrospective study on 67 patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) after tumor resection we evaluated the significance of CD3+ and CD8+ T-lymphocytes and CD20+ B-lymphocytes in tumor and non-tumor liver for time to recurrence (TTR), disease-free survival (DFS) and overall survival. Different subregions of HCC demonstrated uneven lymphocyte infiltration. CD20+ B-lymphocytes and CD8+ T-lymphocytes or their combination in the inner tumor invasive margin and inner/outer margin ratios conveys the best prediction for time to recurrence and disease-free survival.
Immunoperoxidase staining for CD20+ lymphocytes in hepatocellular carcinoma. (A) Regions of interest: TC (tumor center), inn M (inner margin), out M (outer margin), PT (peritumor liver). (B–D) CD20+ nucleated cell profiles were counted using sets of unbiased counting frames.