Novel genetic alterations in liver cancer distinguish distinct clinical outcomes and combination immunotherapy responses

Genomic profiling has revolutionized therapeutic interventions and the clinical management of liver cancer. However, pathogenetic mechanisms, molecular determinants of recurrence, and predictive biomarkers for first-line treatment (anti-PD-(L)1 plus bevacizumab) in liver cancer remain incompletely understood. Targeted next-generation sequencing (tNGS) (a 603-cancer-gene panel) was applied for the genomic profiling of 232 hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and 22 intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma (ICC) patients, among which 47 unresectable/metastatic HCC patients underwent anti-PD-1 plus bevacizumab therapy. Genomic alterations were estimated for their association with vascular invasion (VI), location of onset, recurrence, overall survival (OS), recurrence-free survival (RFS), and anti-PD-1 plus bevacizumab therapy response. The genomic landscape exhibited that the most commonly altered genes in HCC were , , , , , and , while , , , , , and were frequently altered in ICC; notably, (18.18% vs. 1.29%) and (13.64% vs. 1.29%) alterations were significantly more prevalent in ICC. Comparison analysis demonstrated the distinct clinicopathological/genomic characterizations between Chinese and Western HCC cohorts. Genomic profiling of HCC underlying VI showed that , , , , and were frequently altered in the VI group compared to patients without VIs. Compared to the right hepatic lobes of HCC patients, the left hepatic lobe of HCC patients had superior OS (median OS: 36.77 months vs. unreached, < 0.05). By further comparison, Notch signaling pathway-related alterations were significantly prevalent among the right hepatic lobes of HCC patients. Of note, multivariate Cox regression analysis showed that altered , , , , and , as independent prognostic factors, were significantly correlated with the OS of HCC patients. Furthermore, altered was abundantly enriched in the HCC-recurrent group, and impressively, it was independent of clinicopathological features in predicting RFS (median RFS of altered type vs. wild-type: 5.57 months vs. 22.47 months, < 0.01). Regarding those treated HCC patients, TMB value, altered , and cell cycle-related alterations were identified to be positively associated with the objective response rate (ORR), but alterations were negatively correlated with ORR. In addition, altered and cell cycle signaling were significantly associated with reduced and increased time to progression-free survival (PFS), respectively. Comprehensive genomic profiling deciphered