Publications by authors named "Lixu Yan"

Background: Intraoperative assessment of tumor spread through air spaces (STAS) in early-stage lung adenocarcinomas (ADC) has been proposed to stratify patients for surgical management. However, data on the accuracy and reproducibility of detecting STAS on frozen sections (FS) and the prognostic value of STAS on FS remain limited and contradictory.

Methods: We conducted a retrospective study on the feasibility of intraoperative assessment of STAS by comparing the STAS patterns identified on FS and permanent sections from 524 patients diagnosed with pathologic stage 1 lung ADC.

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Article Synopsis
  • Transformation to small cell lung cancer (SCLC) is a resistance mechanism seen in lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD) patients treated with tyrosine kinase inhibitors, particularly in those with leptomeningeal metastases (LM).
  • In a study of 237 non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients who had lumbar punctures, SCLC cells were identified in the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) of 8 patients, all of whom showed resistance to targeted therapies.
  • The results suggest that SCLC transformation in CSF can be detected using cytological evaluation and ctDNA analysis, providing valuable insights into treatment resistance mechanisms, with this transformation correlating with reduced survival rates.
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  • The study evaluates the effectiveness of neoadjuvant immunotherapy combined with chemotherapy in patients with localized EGFR-mutant non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) through a phase 2 trial involving 18 participants.
  • Interim results show that while many patients had positive radiological responses, only 44% reached major pathological response, and there were no cases of complete response.
  • The research indicates that certain T cell populations are linked to resistance against immunotherapy and suggests that monitoring circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) could help identify patients less likely to respond to such treatments.
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This prospective multicenter phase II study evaluated the clinical efficacy of neoadjuvant nivolumab-exclusive (N) and nivolumab-chemotherapy (N/C) combinations based on PD-L1 expression. Eligible patients exhibited resectable clinical stage IIA-IIIB (AJCC 8th edition) NSCLC without EGFR/ALK alterations. Patients received either mono-nivolumab (N) or nivolumab + nab-paclitaxel+ carboplatin (N/C) for three cycles based on PD-L1 expression.

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Pulmonary nodules with part-solid imaging features manifest during the progression from preinvasive to invasive lung adenocarcinoma. To define the spatial composition and evolutionary trajectories of early-stage lung adenocarcinoma, we combined spatial transcriptomics (ST) and pathological annotations from 20 part-solid nodules (PSNs), four of which were matched with single-cell RNA sequencing. Two malignant cell populations (MC1 and MC2) were identified, and a linear evolutionary relationship was observed.

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Background And Objective: A high degree of lymphocyte infiltration is related to superior outcomes amongst patients with lung adenocarcinoma. Recent evidence indicates that the spatial interactions between tumours and lymphocytes also influence the anti-tumour immune responses, but the spatial analysis at the cellular level remains insufficient.

Methods: We proposed an artificial intelligence-quantified Tumour-Lymphocyte Spatial Interaction score (TLSI-score) by calculating the ratio between the number of spatial adjacent tumour-lymphocyte and the number of tumour cells based on topology cell graph constructed using H&E-stained whole-slide images.

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Background: Tumor histomorphology analysis plays a crucial role in predicting the prognosis of resectable lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD). Computer-extracted image texture features have been previously shown to be correlated with outcome. However, a comprehensive, quantitative, and interpretable predictor remains to be developed.

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A high abundance of tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) has a positive impact on the prognosis of patients with lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD). We aimed to develop and validate an artificial intelligence-driven pathological scoring system for assessing TILs on H&E-stained whole-slide images of LUAD. Deep learning-based methods were applied to calculate the densities of lymphocytes in cancer epithelium (DLCE) and cancer stroma (DLCS), and a risk score (WELL score) was built through linear weighting of DLCE and DLCS.

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Primary pulmonary venous malformation is rare and usually presents as single or multiple round masses or nodules. Here, we present the first report of a case of venous malformation presenting as -like bronchial wall thickness that was initially misdiagnosed as bronchiectasis. A Chinese man in his late 20s presented complaining of hemoptysis for 10 days.

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Despite limited efficacy of immunotherapy for advanced non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) with driver mutations, whether neoadjuvant immunotherapy could be clinically valuable in those patients warrants further investigation. We utilized 40 oncogene-mutant NSCLC treated with induction immunotherapy from a large consecutive multicenter cohort. Overall response rate was 62.

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Automatic tissue segmentation in whole-slide images (WSIs) is a critical task in hematoxylin and eosin- (H&E-) stained histopathological images for accurate diagnosis and risk stratification of lung cancer. Patch classification and stitching the classification results can fast conduct tissue segmentation of WSIs. However, due to the tumour heterogeneity, large intraclass variability and small interclass variability make the classification task challenging.

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Major pathological response (MPR) is a potential surrogate for overall survival. We determined whether the dynamic changes in F-labeled fluoro-2-deoxyglucose positron emission tomography/computed tomography ( F-FDG PET/CT) were associated with MPR in patients receiving neoadjuvant immunotherapy. Forty-four patients with stage II-III non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) who received neoadjuvant immunotherapy and radical surgery were enrolled.

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Background: High immune infiltration is associated with favourable prognosis in patients with non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC), but an automated workflow for characterizing immune infiltration, with high validity and reliability, remains to be developed.

Methods: We performed a multicentre retrospective study of patients with completely resected NSCLC. We developed an image analysis workflow for automatically evaluating the density of CD3 and CD8 T-cells in the tumour regions on immunohistochemistry (IHC)-stained whole-slide images (WSIs), and proposed an immune scoring system "I-score" based on the automated assessed cell density.

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Tissue-level semantic segmentation is a vital step in computational pathology. Fully-supervised models have already achieved outstanding performance with dense pixel-level annotations. However, drawing such labels on the giga-pixel whole slide images is extremely expensive and time-consuming.

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Article Synopsis
  • The study aimed to develop and validate the immune ecosystem diversity index (iEDI) as a non-invasive imaging biomarker to assess intratumoural immune status in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).
  • Researchers analyzed two independent cohorts of NSCLC patients, measuring T cell densities and using preoperative CT scans to correlate with patient survival outcomes.
  • Results showed that higher iEDI scores were associated with longer overall survival, indicating its potential as a prognostic tool for NSCLC patients undergoing surgery.
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Background: Despite the well-known role of immunoscore, as a prognostic tool, that appeared to be superior to tumor-node-metastasis (TNM) staging system, no prognostic scoring system based on immunohistochemistry (IHC) staining digital image analysis has been established in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Hence, we aimed to develop and validate an immune-based prognostic risk score (IMPRS) that could markedly improve individualized prediction of postsurgical survival in patients with resected NSCLC.

Methods: In this retrospective study, complete resection of NSCLC (stage I-IIIA) was performed for two independent patient cohorts (discovery cohort, n=168; validation cohort, n=115).

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Objective: To develop and validate a radiomics prognostic scoring system (RPSS) for prediction of progression-free survival (PFS) in patients with stage IV non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) treated with platinum-based chemotherapy.

Methods: In this retrospective study, four independent cohorts of stage IV NSCLC patients treated with platinum-based chemotherapy were included for model construction and validation (Discovery: n=159; Internal validation: n=156; External validation: n=81, Mutation validation: n=64). First, a total of 1,182 three-dimensional radiomics features were extracted from pre-treatment computed tomography (CT) images of each patient.

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Multiple primary lung cancer (MPLC) remains a tough challenge to diagnose and treat. Although neoadjuvant immunotherapy has shown promising results in early stage non-small cell lung cancer, whether such modality can benefit all primary lesions remains unclear. Herein, we performed integrated multiomics analysis in one patient with early stage MPLC with remarkable tumor shrinkage in a solid nodule and no response in two subsolid nodules after treatment with three cycles of neoadjuvant pembrolizumab.

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Nuclei segmentation is a vital step for pathological cancer research. It is still an open problem due to some difficulties, such as color inconsistency introduced by non-uniform manual operations, blurry tumor nucleus boundaries and overlapping tumor cells. In this paper, we aim to leverage the unique optical characteristic of H&E staining images that hematoxylin always stains cell nuclei blue, and eosin always stains the extracellular matrix and cytoplasm pink.

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Objectives: The 2015 World Health Organization classification defines pulmonary large-cell neuroendocrine carcinoma (LCNEC) as a high-grade neuroendocrine carcinoma. However, the clinical characteristics and prognostic factors of pure LCNEC and combined LCNEC remain unclear. Hence, we performed a multi-center retrospective study to compare the clinical outcomes of pure versus combined LCNEC.

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Objective: To develop and validate a radiomics-based predictive risk score (RPRS) for preoperative prediction of lymph node (LN) metastasis in patients with resectable non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).

Methods: We retrospectively analyzed 717 who underwent surgical resection for primary NSCLC with systematic mediastinal lymphadenectomy from October 2007 to July 2016. By using the method of radiomics analysis, 591 computed tomography (CT)-based radiomics features were extracted, and the radiomics-based classifier was constructed.

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Rovalpituzumab tesirine is a promising delta-like protein 3 (DLL3)-targeted antibody-drug conjugate for the treatment of small-cell lung cancer (SCLC). Thyroid transcription factor-1 (TTF-1) and DLL3 protein are associated with SCLC, and may be used to identify patients, who respond to the DLL3-targeted therapy. However, little is known about the expression pattern of the DLL3 protein, and the prognostic value of DLL3 and TTF-1 for SCLC.

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Background: The lung is one of the most common target organs for malignant tumor metastasis. The existence of lung metastasis may have a decisive effect on the choice of treatment regimen. Minute pulmonary meningothelial-like nodules (MPMNs) usually present as ground-glass opacity or solid nodules, mimicking the imaging findings of malignant pulmonary nodules.

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