Retrospective Cohort Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2022. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Clin Cases. Jan 21, 2022; 10(3): 790-801
Published online Jan 21, 2022. doi: 10.12998/wjcc.v10.i3.790
High tumor mutation burden indicates a poor prognosis in patients with intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma
Jian-Ping Song, Xue-Zhi Liu, Qian Chen, Yan-Feng Liu
Jian-Ping Song, Department of Organ Transplantation, Qilu Hospital, Cheeloo College of Medicine, Shandong University, Jinan 250012, Shandong Province, China
Xue-Zhi Liu, Department of General Surgery, Shouguang People's Hospital, Shouguang 262700, Shandong Province, China
Qian Chen, Department of Medical Oncology, Qilu Hospital, Cheeloo College of Medicine, Shandong University, Jinan 250012, Shandong Province, China
Yan-Feng Liu, Department of Hepatobiliary Surgery, Qilu Hospital of Shandong University, Jinan 250012, Shandong Province, China
Author contributions: All the authors solely contributed to this paper.
Supported by Shandong Scientific and Technological Research Program, No. 2019GSF108254; and Shandong Natural Science Foundation, No. ZR2021MH339.
Institutional review board statement: Ethics approval and patient consent were waived by the MSKCC Institutional Review Board.
Informed consent statement: Informed consent from patients was waived by the MSKCC IRB per 45 CFR 46.116 and 45 CFR 164.512, since our data were retrieved from a public database.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.
Data sharing statement: The data that support the findings of this study are available in MSKCC (MSKCC cohort: http://www.cbioportal.org/study/summary?id=ihch_msk_2021)
STROBE statement: The authors have read the STROBE Statement—checklist of items, and the manuscript was prepared and revised according to the STROBE Statement—checklist of items.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Yan-Feng Liu, FRSC, MD, PhD, Doctor, Department of Hepatobiliary Surgery, Qilu Hospital of Shandong University, No. 107 Wenhua Xi Road, Jinan 250012, Shandong Province, China. liu19822012@163.com
Received: August 17, 2021
Peer-review started: August 17, 2021
First decision: November 8, 2021
Revised: November 17, 2021
Accepted: December 23, 2021
Article in press: December 23, 2021
Published online: January 21, 2022
ARTICLE HIGHLIGHTS
Research background

Intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma (ICC) is malignancies of the biliary duct system and constitutes approximately 10%-20% of all primary liver cancers. Tumor mutation burden (TMB) is a useful biomarker across many cancer types for the identification of patients who will benefit from immunotherapy. This study collected the ICC database from the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center to investigate the impact of TMB on the prognosis of ICC patients.

Research motivation

The prognosis of ICC patients is very poor. Previous studies suggest that TMB can used to be a prognostic factor in many types of cancer. It is critical to analyze the prognostic value of TMB in ICC to help individual clinical treatment.

Research objectives

This study aims to investigate the prognostic value of TMB in patients with intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma ICC. In particular, we sought to confirm that TMB is an independent prognostic factor of ICC and construct a nomogram model to predict the prognosis of ICC patients, which was helpful for its clinical application.

Research methods

This study is a retrospective cohort study of ICC patients. This is a study of large sample to investigate the prognostic value of TMB and other clinical characters in ICC.

Research results

TMB was an independent risk predictor for ICC. Furthermore, independent prognostic factors of ICC included CA19-9, chronic viral hepatitis, tumor resection and disease progression (metastatic disease vs solitary liver tumor). The clinical characteristics and TMB data of some cases had missing. which increased the analysis error in our study. Using a single data source also increases statistical error. Further larger–cohort studies are necessary to confirm the predictive value of TMB in the prognosis of ICC patients.

Research conclusions

These findings suggest that TMB was an independent prognostic biomarker in patients with ICC. Moreover, patients with ICC with high TMB had poor overall survival and relapse free survival as compared to those with low TMB.

Research perspectives

We will continue to collect the clinical data of ICC patients and consolidate our conclusions by expanding the present study’s sample size.