SP12: Identification of predictive biomarkers of systemic immune cell adaptation in patients undergoing locoregional or surgical HCC therapy

Hepatocellular carcinoma as the most frequent liver cancer frequently recurs after curative treatment. Immune surveillance by both innate and adaptive immunity plays a key role in controlling residual or recurring disease. The specific immune cell subsets involved in durable tumor control, however, have so far neither been identified nor functionally characterized. Currently it is therefore unclear why some patients relapse after curative treatment and why some remain tumor-free.

To address this gap of knowledge the two research groups of Yang Li and Thomas Wirth will join forces to identify biomarkers of tumor recurrence. While Yang Li’s working group (PhD-candidate first cohort and MD-candidate second cohort) provides the expertise for Computational Biology, Bioinformatics and Next Generation Sequencing, Thomas Wirth (PhD-candidate second cohort and MD-candidate first cohort) will complement the project with his clinical expertise with regard to gastrointestinal cancers and his focus on cancer immunotherapy.

For our project,  we will analyze immune cells and their functional states and assess their role in tumor control and HCC recurrence in patients after ablative and surgical therapy. We will therefore perform unbiased analysis of dynamic systemic immune cell adaptation via analysis of single cell transcriptome and epigenome signatures. In addition, multispectral flow cytometry will allow us to identify therapeutically relevant immune cell populations that predict HCC recurrence in peripheral blood samples of HCC patients.

We hope to identify novel biomarkers as risk factors for HCC recurrence. Our goal is to establish individual risk profiles and adapted follow-up strategies instead of standard procedures.