Department of General Surgery, Anhui Public Health Clinical Center, The First Affiliated Hospital of Anhui Medical University, Hefei, 230012, China.
Department of General Surgery, First Affiliated Hospital of Anhui Medical University, Hefei, 230022, China.
BMC Cancer. 2023 Oct 18;23(1):1001. doi: 10.1186/s12885-023-11288-1.
Recent studies have shown that the high incidence and low cure rate of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) have not improved significantly. Surgery and liver transplantation are the mainstays of prolonging the survival of HCC patients. However, the surgical resection rate of HCC patients is very low, and even after radical surgical resection, the recurrence rate at 5 years postoperatively remains high and the prognosis is very poor, so more treatment options are urgently needed. Increasing evidence suggests that cellular senescence is not only related to cancer development but may also be one of its primary driving factors. We aimed to establish a prognostic signature of senescence-associated genes to predict the prognosis and therapeutic response of HCC patients. The aim of this study was to develop a risk model associated with cellular senescence and to search for potential strategies to treat HCC. We divided HCC patients into two clusters and identified differentially expressed genes (DEGs) between clusters. In this study, low-risk patients had a better prognosis, higher levels of immune cell infiltration, and better efficacy to fluorouracil, Paclitaxel and Cytarabine chemotherapy compared to high-risk patients. To further identify potential biomarkers for HCC, we further validated the expression levels of the four signature genes in HCC and neighbouring normal tissues by in vitro experiments. In conclusion, we identified and constructed a relevant prognostic signature, which performed well in predicting the survival and treatment response of HCC patients. This helps to differentiate between low-score and high-risk HCC, and the results may contribute to precise treatment protocols in clinical practice.
最近的研究表明，肝细胞癌（HCC）的高发病率和低治愈率并没有显著改善。手术和肝移植是延长 HCC 患者生存时间的主要方法。然而， HCC 患者的手术切除率非常低，即使进行根治性手术切除，术后 5 年的复发率仍然很高，预后非常差，因此迫切需要更多的治疗选择。越来越多的证据表明，细胞衰老不仅与癌症的发展有关，而且可能是其主要驱动因素之一。我们旨在建立一个与衰老相关基因相关的预后特征，以预测 HCC 患者的预后和治疗反应。本研究的目的是建立一个与细胞衰老相关的风险模型，并寻找潜在的治疗 HCC 的策略。我们将 HCC 患者分为两个簇，并确定了簇之间差异表达的基因（DEGs）。在这项研究中，与高风险患者相比，低风险患者的预后更好，免疫细胞浸润水平更高，对氟尿嘧啶、紫杉醇和阿糖胞苷化疗的疗效更好。为了进一步鉴定 HCC 的潜在生物标志物，我们通过体外实验进一步验证了四个特征基因在 HCC 和相邻正常组织中的表达水平。总之，我们鉴定并构建了一个相关的预后特征，该特征在预测 HCC 患者的生存和治疗反应方面表现良好。这有助于区分低评分和高风险的 HCC，并且研究结果可能有助于在临床实践中制定精确的治疗方案。
