965P - C14orf159 mutations are associated with shorter relapse-free survival and overall survival after liver transplantation in hepatocellular carcinoma patients meeting Hangzhou criteria

Background

At present, the long-term curative effect of liver transplantation (LT) in patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is better than that of comprehensive treatment, but the overall 5-year survival rate after surgery is only 60%∼70%. Postoperative HCC recurrence is one of the main causes of death in LT recipients. Therefore, It’s urgent need to explore biomarkers of recurrence and metastasis of HCC after LT, which is of great significance for guiding postoperative reexamination and treatment of recipients.

Methods

This study retrospectively and continuously collected 37 patients with HCC who met the Hangzhou criteria (HC) and had undergone LT from January 2019 to January 2021. All tissue and blood samples were performed by whole exome sequencing (WES). After investigating similar studies and combining our clinical observations, we chose 12 months as the recurrence threshold of patients in this study. 37 patients classified into the recurrence group (n=14) and non-recurrence group (n=23). We analyzed the differences in clinical factors and genomic characters between the two groups.

Results

We firstly present the genomic mutation spectrum of such patients. A total of 11713 genomic alterations were detected and15 genes with a mutation frequency of more than 30%. BCLAF1 (73%), MUC4 (57%) and TP53 (49%) were the top 3 mutated genes. Interestingly, all C14orf159 mutations occurred in the rerecurrence group (p=0.046). Subsequently, the patients were divided into C14orf159 mutant type (MT) group and C14orf159 wild type (WT) group. C14orf159-MT group had significantly shorter relapse-free survival (RFS) (p=0.026) and overall survival (OS) (p=0.004). We performed a multivariate analysis showed the C14orf159-MT group had shorter RFS (p<0.01; HR=29.33; 95%CI: 4.614-186.5) and OS (p=0.011; HR=11.12; 95%CI: 1.724-71.669).

Conclusions

For the first time, we found that C14orf159 mutations are associated with shorter RFS and OS after LT in HCC patients meeting HC. It’s necessary to design relevant prospective clinical trials with a larger sample to verify this conclusion.

Clinical trial identification

Editorial acknowledgement

Legal entity responsible for the study

The authors.

Funding

Has not received any funding.

Disclosure

All authors have declared no conflicts of interest.