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Automating classification of treatment responses to combined targeted therapy and immunotherapy in HCC
Bing Quan1,2 , Mingrong Dai1 , Peiling Zhang1,2 , Shiping Chen1,2 , Jialiang Cai1,2 , Yujie Shao1,2 , Pengju Xu3,* , Peizhao Li4,* , Lei Yu1,5,*
1Liver Cancer Institute, Zhongshan Hospital, Fudan University, Shanghai 200032, China
2Key Laboratory of Carcinogenesis and Cancer Invasion of Ministry of Education, Fudan University, Shanghai 200032, China
3Department of Radiology, Zhongshan Hospital, Fudan University, Shanghai 200032, China
4Department of Information and Intelligence Development, Zhongshan Hospital, Fudan University, Shanghai 200032, China
5Department of Hepatobiliary Surgery and Liver Transplantation, Zhongshan Hospital, Fudan University, Shanghai 200032, China
*Correspondence to:Lei Yu , Email:yu.lei@zs-hospital.sh.cn Peizhao Li , Email:li.peizhao@zs-hospital.sh.cn Pengju Xu , Email:xu.pengju@zs-hospital.sh.cn
J Mol Cell Biol, Volume 17, Issue 7, July 2025, mjaf031,  https://doi.org/10.1093/jmcb/mjaf031
Keyword: convolutional neural networks, multimodal model, hepatocellular carcinoma, tumor response

Tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI) combined with immunotherapy regimens are now widely used for treating advanced hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), but their clinical efficacy is limited to a subset of patients. Considering that the vast majority of advanced HCC patients lose the opportunity for liver resection and thus cannot provide tumor tissue samples, we leveraged the clinical and image data to construct a multimodal convolutional neural network (CNN)–Transformer model for predicting and analyzing tumor response to TKI–immunotherapy. We employed an automatic liver tumor segmentation system, based on a two-stage 3D U-Net framework, to delineate lesions by first segmenting the liver parenchyma and then precisely localizing the tumor. This approach effectively addresses the variability in clinical data and significantly reduces bias introduced by manual intervention. Next, we developed a clinical model using only pretreatment clinical information, a CNN model using only pretreatment magnetic resonance imaging data, and an advanced multimodal CNN–Transformer model fusing both imaging and clinical parameters from a training cohort (n = 181) and then compared their predictive performances in an independent cohort (n = 30). In the validation cohort, the area under the curve (95% confidence interval) values were 0.720 (0.710–0.731), 0.695 (0.683–0.707), and 0.785 (0.760–0.810), respectively, indicating that the multimodal model significantly outperformed the single-modality baseline models across validations. Finally, single-nucleus sequencing with the surgical tumor specimens reveals tumor ecosystem diversity associated with treatment response, providing a preliminary biological validation for the prediction model. In summary, this multimodal model effectively integrates imaging and clinical features of HCC patients, has a superior performance in predicting tumor response to TKI–immunotherapy, and provides a reliable tool for optimizing personalized treatment strategies.