Ex-Vivo studies on the effect of some interleukins on mononuclear leucocytes obtained from peripheral blood and malignant tissue of patients with hepatocellularcarcinoma

Abstract

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) represents the third-leading cause of cancer-related death in the world. In Egypt, it accounts for approximately 8.0 % of total cancer patients (5511 cases), with mortality rate of 10.5% (5354 cases). The aim of the present work is to investigate the optimization of immunotherapy for HCC patients by appraisal of both interferon gamma (IFN-γ) levels and phenotyping of lymphocytes obtained from peripheral blood (PB) and fine-needle aspirates (FNA). In this study, lymphocytes isolated from PB and FNA samples were obtained from twenty-eight patients with HCC. These cells were mixed and cultured ex-vivo in the presence of IL-2, IL-2+IL-4 and IL-2+IL-12 cytokines. Multiple comparisons of the levels of IFN-γ in the culture supernatants and phenotyping of the cells were determined to test the effect of these cytokines on cells cytotoxicity. The results can be summarized as following: • Relative lymphocytes count of PB of normal controls were significantly higher than those of HCC patients, coordinating with the fact of infiltration of lymphocytes in the liver ofHCC cases.