Preoperative immune landscape predisposes adverse outcomes in hepatocellular carcinoma patients with liver transplantation

Abstract

Immune class in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) has been shown to possess immunogenic power; however, how preestablished immune landscapes in premalignant and early HCC stages impact the clinical outcomes of HCC patients remains unexplored. We sequenced bulk transcriptomes for 62 malignant tumor samples from a Korean HCC cohort in which 38 patients underwent total hepatectomy, as well as for 15 normal and 47 adjacent nontumor samples. Using in silico deconvolution of expression mixtures, 22 immune cell fractions for each sample were inferred, and validated with immune cell counting by immunohistochemistry. Cell type-specific immune signatures dynamically shifted from premalignant stages to the late HCC stage. Total hepatectomy patients displayed elevated immune infiltration and prolonged disease-free survival compared to the partial hepatectomy patients. However, patients who exhibited an infiltration of regulatory T cells (Tregs) during the pretransplantation period displayed a high risk of tumor relapse with suppressed immune responses, and pretreatment was a potential driver of Treg infiltration in the total hepatectomy group. Treg infiltration appeared to be independent of molecular classifications based on transcriptomic data. Our study provides not only comprehensive immune signatures in adjacent nontumor lesions and early malignant HCC stages but also clinical guidance for HCC patients who will undergo liver transplantation.