Fig. 3

The improvement of immune response in HCC patients during repeated courses of MASCT treatment. a The significant decrease of the frequency of Tregs in HCC patients’ PBMCs during three courses of MASCT treatment. The antigen-specific proliferation of T cells (b) and intracellular IFNγ production of CD8⁺ T cells (c) in HCC patients’ PBMCs were raised during three courses of MASCT treatment. The fold changes of frequency of proliferating of T cells or IFNγ production of CD8⁺ T cells were analyzed by comparing patients’ PBMCs stimulated by multiple antigen peptide pool with PBMCs stimulated by irrelevant peptide. The results representing the overall review of 13 patients were shown in mean ± SD on the left panel, and the graphics demonstrating antigen-specific immune responses of each patient were on the right panel. ^a Eight patients were tumor-free on week 52, however, one PBMCs sample on week 52 (No. 6) was damaged during thawing. One-way ANOVA test was used for statistical analysis. *p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001