The changes of NK cells in peripheral blood mononuclear cells and tumor microenvironment of hepatocellu-lar carcinoma and their clinical significance

GUO Cunli; CHENG Wen; XU Yi; HAN Xue; YANG Xiuhua; ZHU Wenjing

Abstract：Objective To investigate the frequency of different subsets of natural killer( NK) cells in tumor microenvironment and peripheral blood mononuclear cells( PBMCs) from hepatocellular carcinoma( HCC) , and discuss the relationship between NK cells subsets and HCC disease progression. Methods CD3-CD56+, CD3-CD57+ and CD3-CD161+ NK cells were tested from fresh tissue samples and PBMCs by flow cytometry and peripheral blood of 36 healthy volunteers was collected as normal control. Ten HCC speci-mens were tested by immunohistochemical method to detect the corresponding distribution of CD3-CD56+ NK cells, and normal tissues from 3 benign hepatic tumors were collected as control. Results Flow cytometry detection showed that frequency of CD3-CD56+ cells and CD3-CD57+cells were(20.6±10.4)% and(6.9±3.7)% in 40 HCC tissues, lower than(27.9±13.5)% and(9.6±5.1)% in ad-jacent normal tissues( P<0.05) . And there was no significant difference in CD3-CD161+cells( P>0.05) . The frequency of the 3 kinds of NK cells subsets in HCC PBMCs was higher than that in healthy volunteers, but without differences ( P > 0.05 ) . Immunohistochemical staining showed that there was large amount of CD3-CD56+NK cells infiltration in adjacent normal tissue of HCC and only a small distribution in tumor tissue, but they were less than CD3-CD56+ NK cells in normal tissues from 3 benign hepatic tumors. The proportion of NK cells inⅠ+Ⅱstage HCC tissues was higher thanⅢ+Ⅳstage, especially CD3-CD56+and CD3-CD161+NK cells. No linear relationship was found between the frequency of NK cells subsets and gender, number of lesions, AFP, GOT, GUT, leukocytes, hepatic virus infection and TNM stage( P>0.05) . Conclusion The decrease of NK cells is correlated to the natural immunity and tumor progression of HCC.