Objective: There is a lack of standard salvage treatment options for recurrent or metastatic nasopharyngeal carcinoma (RM-NPC) that has failed platinum-containing regimens. Breakthroughs in immunotherapy have opened up new options for these patients. However, the efficacy and safety of immunotherapy have not been clarified. This study aimed to summarize and assess the efficacy and safety of PD-1 inhibitors in patients with RM-NPC who failed platinum-containing chemotherapy. Methods: Up to August 25, 2022, clinical trials of PD-1 inhibitors in RM-NPC patients who failed platinum-containing regimens were searched in the PubMed, Embase, Cochrane, and Web of Science databases. Retrieval subject terms included “nasopharyngeal carcinoma”, “metastatic”, “recurrence”, “PD-1”, and “PD-L1”. The clinical trials eligible for inclusion were systematically reviewed and meta-analyzed. Results: A total of 9 studies including 842 patients with RM-NPC were included in this meta-analysis. The results showed that PD-1 inhibitors had promising efficacy in patients with RM-NPC who failed platinum-containing regimens: objective response rate (ORR) was 24% (95% confidence interval [CI] 21–26%), disease control rate (DCR) was 52% (95% CI 45–58%), 1-year progression-free survival (PFS) rate was 25% (95% CI 18–32%), and 1-year overall survival (OS) rate was 53% (95% CI 37–68%). In terms of treatment-related adverse events (AEs), the incidence of grade ≥ 3 treatment-related AEs was 19% (95% CI 13–24%). In addition, we found that PD-1 inhibitors were more effective in patients with PD-L1 positive than in patients with PD-L1 negative nasopharyngeal carcinoma who had failed platinum-containing regimens (ORR 31% (95%CI 26–35%) vs. 21% (95% CI 17–25%)). Conclusion: PD-1 inhibitors may provide a survival benefit for patients with RM-NPC who have failed platinum-containing regimens and have the advantage of a good safety profile, making them a promising treatment option.

Background: Esophageal Squamous Cell Cancer (ESCC) is an aggressive disease associated with a poor prognosis. As a newly defined form of regulated cell death, ferroptosis plays a crucial role in cancer development and treatment and might be a promising therapeutic target. However, the expression patterns of ferroptosis-related genes (FRGs) in ESCC remain to be systematically analyzed.Methods: First, we retrieved the transcriptional profile of ESCC from TCGA and GEO datasets (GSE47404, GSE23400, and GSE53625) and performed unsupervised clustering to identify different ferroptosis patterns. Then, we used the ssGSEA algorithm to estimate the immune cell infiltration of these patterns and explored the differences in immune cell abundance. Common genes among patterns were finally identified as signature genes of ferroptosis patterns.Results: Herein, we depicted the multi-omics landscape of FRGs through integrated bioinformatics analysis and identified three ESCC subtypes with distinct immune characteristics: clusters A-C. Cluster C was abundant in CD8⁺ T cells and other immune cell infiltration, while cluster A was immune-barren. By comparing the differently expressed genes between clusters of diverse datasets, we defined a gene signature for each cluster and successfully validated it in the TCGA-ESCC dataset.Conclusion: We provided a comprehensive insight into the expression pattern of ferroptosis genes and their interaction with immune cell infiltration. Additionally, we established a gene signature to define the ferroptosis patterns, which might be used to predict the response to immunotherapy.

This study aimed to investigate Hippo pathway-related prognostic long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) and their prognostic value in liver hepatocellular carcinoma (LIHC). Expression and clinical data regarding LIHC were acquired from The Cancer Genome Atlas and European Bioinformatics Institute array databases. Hippo pathway-related lncRNAs and their prognostic value were revealed, followed by molecular subtype investigations. Differences in survival, clinical characteristics, immune cell infiltration, and checkpoint expression between the subtypes were explored. LASSO regression was used to determine the most valuable prognostic lncRNAs, followed by the establishment of a prognostic model. Survival and differential expression analyses were conducted between two groups (high- and low-risk). A total of 313 Hippo pathway-related lncRNAs were identified from LIHC, of which 88 were associated with prognosis, and two molecular subtypes were identified based on their expression patterns. These two subtypes showed significant differences in overall survival, pathological stage and grade, vascular invasion, infiltration abundance of seven immune cells, and expression of several checkpoints, such as CTLA-4 and PD-1/L1 (P < 0.05). LASSO regression identified the six most valuable independent prognostic lncRNAs for establishing a prognosis risk model. Risk scores calculated by the risk model assigned patients into two risk groups with an AUC of 0.913 and 0.731, respectively, indicating that the high-risk group had poor survival. The risk score had an independent prognostic value with an HR of 2.198. In total, 3007 genes were dysregulated between the two risk groups, and the expression of most genes was elevated in the high-risk group, involving the cell cycle and pathways in cancers. Hippo pathway-related lncRNAs could stratify patients for personalized treatment and predict the prognosis of patients with LIHC.