Exploiting innate immunity of hepatocellular carcinoma to improve patients treatment

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is the most common liver tumor and among the deadliest cancers worldwide. Environmental risk factors for developing HCC include viral infection (HBV and HCV), alcohol abuse and metabolic syndrome. Despite a significant therapeutic advance in the treatment of advanced HCC, ~75% of patients do not respond to immunotherapies for unclear reasons. Such a heterogeneous response highlights the need to further explore etiology- and organ-specific immunity towards improved patient stratification and the development of new combination therapies.

To better characterize innate immune response with respect to liver zonation, tissue damage and etiology of the disease, we analyse multi-omic datasets from a patient's cohort including scRNAseq, spatial scRNAseq, bulk RNAseq and 16S microbiome sequencing. In collaboration with ImmunoConcEpT, we are taking advantages of these multi-omic data to improve data integration approaches and closely assess the relevance of their biological interpretation.

Publications

Giraud, J., Chalopin, D., Blanc, J.F. and Saleh, M., 2021. Hepatocellular carcinoma immune landscape and the potential of immunotherapies. Frontiers in immunology, 12, p.699.