A Study on Intratumoral Fibrosis and α-SMA Expression in Intrahepatic Cholangiocarcinoma

Intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma (ICC), which originates from the proximal secondary bile duct in the liver parenchyma (based on the direction of bile flow), is the second most common type of primary liver cancer after hepatocellular carcinoma, accounting for 10-20% of all primary liver cancers. In recent years, the incidence and mortality of ICC have been increasing in most regions of the world. α-SMA-positive CAFs in ICC may aggravate tumor progression and reduce survival time, which is a significant prognostic indicator. However, the evaluation of α-SMA expression level in previous studies mostly relied on subjective evaluation by pathologists after visual observation, and there was a lack of quantitative indicators. In addition, there are differences in the effect of intratumoral fibrosis on the prognosis of ICC, and there may be an interactive relationship between the expression of α-SMA and intratumoral fibrosis. The effect of intratumoral α-SMA expression level and fibrosis on the prognosis of ICC still deserves further exploration. Therefore, the aim of this study is to investigate the relationship between the expression level of α-SMA and the degree of fibrosis in ICC and Progression-free survival (PFS) and Overall survival (OS) by survival analysis. To determine the expression level of α-SMA and the risk degree of fibrosis in ICC.

Inclusion criteria

• Patients who underwent radical resection of liver tumors in our center and obtained surgical specimens;
• ICC was diagnosed by postoperative pathology

Exclusion criteria

• Patients had received radiotherapy, chemotherapy, intervention and other treatments for liver tumors before surgery
• The tumor sections could not be obtained due to the loss of wax blocks or most of the defects of pathological specimens
• No upper abdominal Gd-EOB-DTPA-enhanced MRI examination in our center within one month before surgery
• Poor image quality or incomplete image data