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Background: Artificial intelligence (AI)-assisted clinical trial screening is a promising prospect, although previous matching systems were developed in English, and relevant studies have only been conducted in Western countries. Therefore, we evaluated an AI-based clinical trial matching system (CTMS) that extracts medical data from the electronic health record system and matches them to clinical trials automatically. Methods: This study included 1,053 consecutive inpatients primarily diagnosed with hepatocellular carcinoma who were referred to the liver tumor center of an academic medical center in China between January and December 2019. The eligibility criteria extracted from two clinical trials, patient attributes, and gold standard were decided manually. We evaluated the performance of the CTMS against the established gold standard by measuring the accuracy, sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value (PPV), negative predictive value (NPV), and run time required. Results: The manual reviewers demonstrated acceptable interrater reliability (Cohen’s kappa 0.65–0.88). The performance results for the CTMS were as follows: accuracy, 92.9–98.0%; sensitivity, 51.9–83.5%; specificity, 99.0–99.1%; PPV, 75.7–85.1%; and NPV, 97.4–98.9%. The time required for eligibility determination by the CTMS and manual reviewers was 2 and 150 h, respectively. Conclusions: We found that the CTMS is particularly reliable in excluding ineligible patients in a significantly reduced amount of time. The CTMS excluded ineligible patients for clinical trials with good performance, reducing 98.7% of the work time. Thus, such AI-based systems with natural language processing and machine learning have potential utility in Chinese clinical trials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is one of the most common cancers in China and frequently occurs with chronic hepatitis B virus infection. To investigate whether cell-based cancer immunotherapy induces tumor specific immune responses in patients with HCC and provides clinical benefits, as well as to elucidate the most immunogenic tumor associated antigens (TAAs), multiple antigen stimulating cellular therapy (MASCT) was applied in addition to standard of care.Methods: Mature dendritic cells (DCs) and activated T cells prepared for MASCT were generated from autologous peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs). DCs were loaded with a peptide pool of multiple HCC-related tumor antigens, and T cells were stimulated by these DCs.Results: Thirteen patients with HCC received repeated MASCT after tumor resection during which their immune responses were examined. After three courses of MASCT, the frequency of regulatory T cells in the patients' PBMCs significantly decreased (p < 0.001), while the antigen peptide pool-triggered T cell proliferation (p < 0.001) and IFNγ production (p = 0.001) were significantly enhanced. The specific T cell responses against each antigen in the pool were detected in 11 patients, but with individualized distinct patterns. The most immunogenic TAAs for HCC are survivin, CCND1, and RGS5. Moreover, the antigen-specific immune responses observed in tumor-free patients' PBMCs were significantly stronger than that in the patients with recurrence (p = 0.037).Conclusions: Our study demonstrates that MASCT is well-tolerated by patients with HCC and elicits strong and dynamic immune responses specifically against multiple tumor associated antigens, which may correlate with clinical outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is one of the most common cancers in China and frequently occurs with chronic hepatitis B virus infection. To investigate whether cell-based cancer immunotherapy induces tumor specific immune responses in patients with HCC and provides clinical benefits, as well as to elucidate the most immunogenic tumor associated antigens (TAAs), multiple antigen stimulating cellular therapy (MASCT) was applied in addition to standard of care., Methods: Mature dendritic cells (DCs) and activated T cells prepared for MASCT were generated from autologous peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs). DCs were loaded with a peptide pool of multiple HCC-related tumor antigens, and T cells were stimulated by these DCs., Results: Thirteen patients with HCC received repeated MASCT after tumor resection during which their immune responses were examined. After three courses of MASCT, the frequency of regulatory T cells in the patients' PBMCs significantly decreased (p < 0.001), while the antigen peptide pool-triggered T cell proliferation (p < 0.001) and IFNγ production (p = 0.001) were significantly enhanced. The specific T cell responses against each antigen in the pool were detected in 11 patients, but with individualized distinct patterns. The most immunogenic TAAs for HCC are survivin, CCND1, and RGS5. Moreover, the antigen-specific immune responses observed in tumor-free patients' PBMCs were significantly stronger than that in the patients with recurrence (p = 0.037)., Conclusions: Our study demonstrates that MASCT is well-tolerated by patients with HCC and elicits strong and dynamic immune responses specifically against multiple tumor associated antigens, which may correlate with clinical outcomes.