A new study suggests that Immuncell-LC, an autologous immune cell therapy, may effectively curb cancer recurrence in liver transplant recipients—a patient population in which cell-based immunotherapies have traditionally posed significant safety challenges.
GC Cell announced on the 11th that it presented the research at the 37th Congress of the International Association of Surgeons, Gastroenterologists and Oncologists (IASGO 2026), held at BEXCO in Busan. The study demonstrated Immuncell-LC's safety alongside its potential to suppress disease recurrence and improve overall survival in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) patients facing a high risk of relapse after liver transplantation.
Because liver transplant recipients must take immunosuppressive medications to prevent organ rejection, administering therapies that stimulate the immune system—such as Immuncell-LC, which utilizes activated cytokine-induced killer (CIK) cells—has historically raised concerns over triggering acute graft rejection. In this study, however, rates of acute rejection-free survival did not differ significantly between the treatment and control groups.
The research team performed a retrospective comparative analysis of HCC patients who received a liver transplant despite exceeding the Milan criteria—the standard clinical threshold for transplant eligibility. The analysis compared patients who began receiving Immuncell-LC four weeks post-transplant against a control group that received no adjuvant cell therapy.
Immuncell-LC was well tolerated, with no treatment-related toxicity observed. At two years post-transplantation, recurrence-free survival (RFS) reached 87.5% in the Immuncell-LC cohort compared to 62.9% in the control group. Overall survival (OS) reached 100% in the treatment group, compared with 81.5% among controls.
IASGO 2026 is an international academic congress bringing together surgical and medical oncology specialists from more than 70 countries to share clinical research and advance global medical practice.
“This study is significant in that it confirms the potential of Immuncell-LC as a viable therapeutic option to prevent recurrence in patients at high risk of liver cancer returning after organ transplantation,” said Hong Geun, professor and head of the Organ Transplantation Center at Ewha Womans University Seoul Hospital.
Immuncell-LC is an autologous T-lymphocyte therapy manufactured by expanding and activating immune cells extracted from a patient's own blood. It received regulatory approval in South Korea in 2007 as an adjuvant treatment following curative resection of hepatocellular carcinoma.
