Purpose: The purpose of this prospective observational study was to investigate the relationship between pretreatment neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio (NLR) and posttreatment early tumor shrinkage (ETS), and clinical outcomes in patients with unresectable hepatocellular carcinoma (uHCC) who received lenvatinib, programmed death-1 inhibitors plus transcatheter arterial chemoembolization. Patients and Methods: A total of 63 uHCC patients were treated with this triple combination. Multivariate analyses to determine the independent factors associated with overall survival (OS) were employed. The link between NLR and clinical results was further analyzed. Furthermore, the predictive value of combining NLR with ETS should be investigated to stratify patients receiving treatment for survival benefits. Results: Progression-free survival and OS were 9.8 and 23.0 months, respectively, with a median follow-up of 20.8 months. On a multivariate analysis of OS, NLR was the only independent prognostic factor. Patients with NLR low (NLR < 3.2) had longer progression-free survival (19.3 vs 7.3 months, P < 0.001) and OS (28.9 vs 16.9 months, P < 0.001), higher objective response rate (86.7% vs 39.4%, P < 0.001), and a higher chance of achieving ETS ≥ 10% (ETS high) (73.3% vs 21.1%, P < 0.001) compared with patients with NLR high (NLR ≥ 3.2). The Spearman correlation analysis also showed the strong consistency between NLR and ETS (R2 = 0.6751). In the subgroup analysis, greater OS benefit was found in the NLR low/ETS high group than the NLR high/ETS low group (χ2 = 31.258, P < 0.001), while there was no survival difference for patients in the NLR low/ETS low group compared with in the NLR high/ETS high group (χ2 = 0.046, P = 0.830). Conclusion: NLR has the potential to identify which patients would benefit from this triple therapy, and when combined with ETS, it has the potential to provide greater predictive power in selecting the appropriate candidates for this combination treatment.
Keywords: biomarker; combination therapy; early tumor shrinkage; hepatocellular carcinoma; neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio.