Impact of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs on efficacy of anti-PD-1 therapy for primary liver cancer / 南方医科大学学报

OBJECTIVE@#To assess the impact of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) on clinical outcomes of patients receiving anti-PD-1 immunotherapy for hepatocellular carcinoma.@*METHODS@#We conducted a retrospective study among 215 patients with primary liver cancer receiving immunotherapy between June, 2018 and October, 2020. The patients with balanced baseline characteristics were selected based on propensity matching scores, and among them 33 patients who used NSAIDs were matched at the ratio of 1∶3 with 78 patients who did not use NSAIDs. We compared the overall survival (OS), progression-free survival (PFS), and disease control rate (DCR) between the two groups.@*RESULTS@#There was no significant difference in OS between the patients using NSAIDs (29.7%) and those who did not use NSAIDs (70.2%). Univariate and multivariate analyses did not show an a correlation of NSAIDs use with DCR (univariate analysis: OR=0.602, 95% CI: 0.299-1.213, P=0.156; multivariate analysis: OR=0.693, 95% CI: 0.330-1.458, P=0.334), PFS (univariate analysis: HR=1.230, 95% CI: 0.789-1.916, P=0.361; multivariate analysis: HR=1.151, 95% CI: 0.732-1.810, P=9.544), or OS (univariate analysis: HR=0.552, 95% CI: 0.208-1.463, P=0.232; multivariate analysis: HR=1.085, 95% CI: 0.685-1.717, P=0.729).@*CONCLUSION@#Our results show no favorable effect of NSAIDs on the efficacy of immunotherapy in patients with advanced primary liver cancer, but this finding still needs to be verified by future prospective studies of large cohorts.

Expression of microRNA-107 in hepatocellular carcinoma and its clinical significance / 南方医科大学学报

<p><b>OBJECTIVE</b>To investigate the expression of microRNA-107 (miR-107) and its functional role in hepatocellular carcinoma(HCC).</p><p><b>METHODS</b>The gene chip data of HCC obtained from the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) database and the Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database were used to analyze the expression levels of miR-107 in liver cancer. Twenty-two pairs of fresh surgical specimens of HCC and adjacent tissues and 53 paraffin-embedded specimens of HCC were examined for miR-107 expression by qRT-PCR. The correlation of the expression levels of miR-107 with the clinicopathologic characteristics of the patients were analyzed. The role of miR-107 in regulating the proliferation of hepatocellular carcinoma cells were determined by MTT assay in Huh7 cells transfected with a miR-107 mimic or inhibitor.</p><p><b>RESULTS</b>The expression levels of miR-107 were significantly up-regulated in HCC tissues as compared to the adjacent tissues (P<0.05) in positive correlation with the tumor size (P<0.032). Transfection with miR-107 mimics significantly promoted the cell proliferation (P<0.0001) while miR-107 inhibitor inhibited the cell proliferation (P<0.0001).</p><p><b>CONCLUSION</b>The expression of miR-107 is up- regulated in HCC tissues and its expression levels are correlated with HCC cell proliferation, suggesting its role as a potential oncogene in liver cancer.</p>