In a publication in Frontiers in Immunology HPA related researchers investigated the roles of macrophages and T cells in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC).

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is the most common type of primary liver cancer and therefore novel therapeutic strategies relying on immunotherapy would be of great interest for HCC treatment. Despite the progress in the field many advanced HCC patients do not respond to current immunotherapies. To address this issue a deeper understanding of the tumor immune microenvironment (TIME), particularly the functional diversity of liver macrophages and T cells, and their interactions within the TIME is necessary.

In this study transcriptomics data and gene co-expression network and regulatory analysis was used to estimate immune cell heterogeneity and its impact on HCC patients' survival.

The concurrent analysis of bulk and single-cell RNA-seq data was used to elucidate key biological processes and associated functional cell types in HCC and was able to highlight the role of immunosuppression, with a particular focus on liver macrophages, which emerged as central players in the tumor microenvironment. By integrating bulk and and scRNA-seq the role of SPP1 + macrophages in modulating TIME in liver cancer could be pinpointed and the inhibition effects of SPP1 in HCC-TAM was also demonstrated. Inhibition of SPP1 in tumor-associated macrophages was shown to lead to a shift towards a favorable phenotype and suggests SPP1 as a potential translational target in immunotherapy for HCC.

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