706 0.386 1.291 0.258 Resection margin 1.138 0.574 2.258 0.711 Discussion In this study, expression of three CTAs at protein level was investigated by immunohistochemistry. MAGE-A1, MAGE-A3/4 and NY-ESO-1 were selected considering that these antigens have been well-accredited and are being applied for clinical trials of vaccine immunotherapy [15–18]. The

expression frequency of CTAs varies greatly in different tumors type [19, 20]. Our results showed that expression rates of MAGE-A1, MAGE-A3/4 and NY-ESO-1 in IHCC were less than 30%. According to the established criteria [21], IHCC should be classified to be low “”CTA expressors”". In a previous study, the expression rates of MAGE-A1, MAGE-A3 and NY-ESO-I in

IHCC were 20.0% (4/20), 20.0% (4/20) and 10.0% (2/20) detected by RT-PCR [6]. However, in the this website immunohistochemical study by Tsuneyama et al. [7], 32 of 68 IHCC cases (47.1%) demonstrated positive MAGE-A3 expression using a polyclonal antibody. These discrepancies between our and previous studies may be related to the difference in the method of detection, the antibodies adopted and patient populations. In this study, we also identified that only MAGE-3/4 and at least one positive CTA expression correlated aggressive phenotypes including bigger tumor size and higher recurrence rate. There was no other association observed between CTA markers (either individual or combined) with Crenigacestat mouse HLA class I expression and clinicopathological parameters of IHCC patients. BMS-907351 cost Curves of patients with positive for the individual or multiple CTAs (with two or three CTA positive) markers leaned science towards a poorer outcome, however, only MAGE-A3/4 reach statistical significance. We speculated that such statistically insignificant trends were likely to be due to the fact that only a small number of IHCC cases presented with positive CTA expression (either individual or co-expressed) in this study. Considering that combination of CTAs makers may reinforce the predictive value for prognosis and malignant phonotype by one single CTA alone, we next asked whether at least one CTA expression

had n significant impact on outcome. We found that at least one CTA expression did indeed correlate with a significantly poorer survival. Furthermore, at least one positive CTA expression was also an independent prognostic factor for patients with IHCC. Interestingly, in this study, MAGE-A1 and NY-ESO-1 positive IHCC tumors seem to have a relatively higher frequency of positive expression of HLA class I than MAGE-A3/4 positive cases. Recently, Kikuchi et al. [22] indicated that co-expression of CTA (XAGE-1b) and HLA class I expression may elicit a CD8+ T-cell response against minimal residual disease after surgery and resulted in prolonged survival of NSCLC patients, while expression of CTA combined with down-regulated HLA class I expression correlated with poor survival.