Commentary
Immunotherapy has been approved for treating hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), but biomarker-based stratification of patients for optimal response to therapy is an unmet need.
In preclinical models of NASH-induced HCC, therapeutic immunotherapy targeted at programmed death-1 (PD1) expanded activated CD8+PD1+ T cells within tumours but did not lead to tumour regression, which indicates that tumour immune surveillance was impaired.
Data suggest that CD8+ T cells help to induce NASH–HCC, rather than invigorating or executing immune surveillance.
Here D. Pfister et al. (German Cancer Research Center, Heidelberg, Germany) report the progressive accumulation of exhausted, unconventionally activated CD8+PD1+ T cells in NASH-affected livers.
Their data provide a rationale for stratification of patients with HCC according to underlying aetiology in studies of immunotherapy as a primary or adjuvant treatment.
