Research Paper Volume 11, Issue 8 pp 2343—2351

Figure 1. More intratumoral Treg cells are detected in high-grade, large HCCs and correlate with poor prognosis. We examined intratumoral Treg cells (CD4+CD25+Foxp3+) in total T-cells (CD4+) in 40 HCC specimens. (A) Illustration of FAC soring of CD4+CD25+Foxp3+ cells. First, CD4+CD25+ cells were isolated (circled gating in the upper panel), and this population was further purified for Foxp3+ cells (circled gating in the lower panel). (B) Percentage of intratumoral Treg cells in specimens with different tumor grades. (C) The median size of these 40 dissected tumors was used as a cutting point to get 20 small-size HCCs and 20 large-size HCCs. The percentage of intratumoral Treg cells in the large-size HCCs and small-size HCCs was compared. (D) The median level of %Treg was used to separate %Treg-high (n=20) from %Treg-low patients (n=20) to compare their overall five-year survival. *p<0.05. N=40.