Immune regulation in hepatocellular carcinogenesis: Defense or synergy?

Primary liver cancer is one of the most common and aggressive malignant diseases in China. The traditional therapeutic strategies to live cancer most focus on cancer cells only, but more and more researches have shown that the immune system and tumor microenvironment are also important to hepatocellular carcinogenesis. In this paper, we focus on the immune regulation to liver cancer and mainly talk about the function of tumor microenvironment, such as lymphocytes, inflammatory cells, cytokines and chemokines in hepatocellular carcinogenesis. We attempte to briefly elucidate the double-edged regulation functions of immune system on liver cancer in cellular and molecular levels. Meanwhile, we also emphasize the anti-tumor effects and potential clinical applications of these immune regulators. We believe that the further understanding of immune regulation in liver cancer will help us to discover the mechanism of carcinogenesis and explore new drug for liver cancer immunotherapy.