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Using multiple cytokines to predict hepatocellular carcinoma recurrence in two patient cohorts
11] Department of Hepatobiliary Surgery, Sun Yat-sen University Cancer Center, 651 Dongfeng Road East, Guangzhou 510060, China [2] Sun Yat-sen University Cancer Center, State Key Laboratory of Oncology in South China, Collaborative Innovation Center for Cancer Medicine, 651 Dongfeng East Road, Guangzhou 510060, China [3] Department of Gastrointestinal Surgery, the Sixth Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou 510655, China.
Background:
Cytokines are tightly linked to the carcinogenesis, development and prognosis of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). We determined the prognostic value of 39 circulating cytokines in HCC patients after radical resection and then developed a novel cytokine-based prognostic classifier (CBPC) for the prediction of patient prognosis.
Methods:
A total of 179 patients were divided into two cohorts based on the date of radical resection. Thirty-nine cytokines were simultaneously analysed in patient serum samples using multiplex bead-based Luminex technology. Support vector machine-based methods and Cox proportional hazard models were used to develop a CBPC from the training cohort, which was then validated in the validation cohort.
Results:
Among seven cytokines significantly correlating with the disease-free survival (DFS) in the training cohort, six of them were validated to be significant prognostic factors to predict DFS and overall survival (OS) in the validation cohort, namely fibroblast growth factor 2 (FGF-2), growth-regulated oncogene (GRO), interleukin 8 (IL-8), interferon gamma-induced protein 10 (IP-10), vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), and interferon alpha-2 (IFN-α2). By integrating six cytokines and three clinical characteristics, we developed a CBPC to predict the recurrence and 3-year OS of HCC patients (sensitivity, 0.648; specificity, 0.918). In the validation cohort, the CBPC were confirmed to have significant predictive power for predicting tumour recurrence and OS (sensitivity, 0.585; specificity, 0.857). Interestingly, IFN-α2 was the only cytokine being independent prognostic factor in both patient cohorts.
Conclusion:
Our study verifies the presence of specific cytokine-phenotype associations with patient prognosis in HCC. The CBPC developed include multiple circulating cytokines and may serve as a novel screening approach for identifying HCC patients with a high risk of post-resection recurrence and shorter OS. These individuals may also be suitable for cytokine-targeted therapies.
