A prognosis and impact factor analysis of DC-CIK cell therapy for patients with hepatocellular carcinoma undergoing postoperative TACE

ABSTRACT

Dendritic cell-cytokine-induced killer (DC-CIK) cell therapy has been experimentally implemented for enhancing anti-tumoral immunity in patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) undergoing postoperative transcatheter arterial chemoembolization (POTACE). We performed a retrospective study to evaluate the clinical efficacies of DC-CIK cell therapy and its correlations with several immune factors of the primary tumors. The overall survival time of HCC patients with HBV infection in the study group (POTACE plus DC-CIK cell therapy) was significantly longer than that of the control group (POTACE alone). The expression level of PD-L1 but not the tumor-infiltrated CD8 and CD4 T cells in the tumor tissues showed significant negative correlations with relapse-free survival (RFS) and overall survival (OS), which was also an independent prognostic factor for the five-years' suvival of patients with HCC receiving POTACE treatment. Furthermore, our study validated that PD-L1 expression was significantly inversely correlated with the survival time of HCC patients receiving POTACE plus DC-CIK cell therapy treatment. More importantly, DC-CIK cell therapy provided the best clinical benefits to HCC patients with the low PD-L1 expression receiving POTACE, which indicate that PD-L1 expression level can serve as a pivotal predictor for the therapeutic efficacy of DC-CIK cell therapy for HCC patients receiving POTACE treatment.

KEYWORDS:

• Hepatocellular carcinoma
• Cytokine-induced killer cell immunotherapy
• PD-L1
• Tissue microarray
• Immunohistochemistry
• Transcatheter arterial chemoembolization

Disclosure of potential conflicts of interest

No potential conflicts of interest were disclosed.

Acknowledgments

We are grateful for the assistance of the follow-up office in The Affiliated Hospital of Xuzhou Medical University. This research was supported by grants from the Major Programs of Natural Science Project of the Education Department of Jiangsu Province (14KJA320003), National Natural Science General Program (81673008), and the joint program between the Science and Technology Department of Yunnan Province and Kunming Medical University (2013FZ265).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by The Major Programs of Nature Science Project of the Education Department of Jiangsu Province (14KJA320003), the Joint Program Between the Science and Technology Department of Yunnan Province and Kunming Medical University (2013FZ265), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (81673008), the Social Development Project of Jiangsu Province (BE2017642), and the Key Project For Industry Innovation of Xuzhou City (KC17012).