2.8. The Immunophenoscore (IPS) Analysis

IPS is a scoring scheme based on immune-related gene expression z-scores that are representative of effector cells, immunosuppressive cells, major histocompatibility complex (MHC) molecules, and select immunomodulators. The score ranges from 0 to 10 with higher scores reflecting increased immunogenicity. IPS has been validated for the prediction of patient response to anti-CTLA4 and anti-PD-1 therapies [44]. The IPS data source for HCC patients was downloaded from The Cancer Immunome Atlas (TCIA) (https://tcia.at/home (accessed on 9 May 2021)). The R pRRophetic package, which includes EGFR, multi-kinases, mTOR inhibitors, etc. was applied to estimate drug sensitivity for HCC, defined by the inhibitor concentration where response is reduced by half (IC50) [45]. Then the Wilcoxon signed-rank test was used to perform different analyses.