Research Paper|Volume 12, Issue 19|pp 19641—19659

Identification of immune landscape signatures associated with clinical and prognostic features of hepatocellular carcinoma

Hongmei Yan¹, Yuchuan Chen¹, Kai Wang², Lu Yu¹, Xixin Huang³, Qianyu Li⁴, Yuwen Xie^1,⁵, Jiayu Lin⁶, Yueyun He⁴, Xinyu Yi⁶, Yanzhi Wang⁴, Longhua Chen¹, Yi Ding¹, Yiyi Li¹

¹Department of Radiation Oncology, Nanfang Hospital, Southern Medical University, Guangzhou 510515, China
²Division of Hepatobiliopancreatic Surgery, Department of General Surgery, Nanfang Hospital, Southern Medical University, Guangzhou 510515, China
³The First School of Clinical Medicine, Southern Medical University, Guangzhou 510515, China
⁴Medical Imaging Specialty, the First School of Clinical Medicine, Southern Medical University, Guangzhou 510515, China
⁵Department of Pathology, Nanfang Hospital, Southern Medical University, Guangzhou 510515, China
⁶Clinical Medicine Specialty, the First School of Clinical Medicine, Southern Medical University, Guangzhou, 510515, China

* Equal contribution

Received: February 21, 2020Accepted: August 14, 2020Published: October 13, 2020

https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.103977

Copyright: © 2020 Yan et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Abstract

While cancer immunotherapy has been remarkably successful in some malignancies, some cancers derive limited benefit from current immunotherapies. Here, we combined immune landscape signatures with hepatocellular carcinoma clinical and prognostic features to classify them into distinct subtypes. The immunogenomic profiles, stromal cell features and immune cell composition of the subtypes were then systematically analyzed. Two independent prognostic indexes were established based on 6 immune-related genes and 17 differentially expressed genes associated with stromal cell content. These indexes were significantly correlated with tumor mutation burden, deficient DNA mismatch repair and microsatellite instability. In addition, tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes, including activated NK cells, resting memory CD4 T-cells, eosinophils, and activated mast cells were significantly correlated with hepatocellular carcinoma survival. In conclusion, we have comprehensively described the immune landscape signatures and identified prognostic immune-associated biomarkers of hepatocellular carcinoma. Our findings highlight potential novel avenues for improving responses to immunotherapy.