Immune cell senescence focuses on the phenotypic characteristics of individual lymphocytes during aging. Immune cell exhaustion is due to the production of excessive ROS in the mitochondria in cancer. Senescence and exhaustion are not simply the result of an inevitable and progressive decline of all immune functions, but rather represent a highly dynamic process of remodeling and adaptation.  Professor Xu’s research found that a period of two weeks was sufficient to reverse the multiple senescent or exhausted cell subsets into functional subsets. Both tumor killing-associated Th1 cytokines and innate immune cells (i.e., NK, NKT, total γδ T cell, Vδ1 T cell, and Vδ2 T cell) have been found to be significantly activated following hydrogen inhalation, the proportion of regulatory T cells in the blood decreased significantly. It is concluded that hydrogen gas can rescue the function of exhausted and senescent lymphocytes in NSCLC patients. It is envisaged that if cryoablation is carried out after hydrogen inhalation, the killer immune cells "rescued" by hydrogen will be further activated by the tumor antigens released by the cryoablated cancer cells, thereby improving the patient's immune status and cryotherapy outcome.

徐克成教授丨第二十一届世界冷冻大会发言：题目《从氢气调节免疫的角度改进冷冻消融的模型研究》

免疫细胞衰老主要是指单个淋巴细胞在衰老过程中的表型特征。免疫细胞衰竭是由于癌症中线粒体产生了过多的ROS。衰老和衰竭并不只是所有免疫功能不可避免地逐渐下降的结果，而是代表了一个高度动态的重塑和适应过程。徐克成教授的研究发现，两周的时间足以将多种衰老或衰竭的细胞亚群逆转为功能性亚群。发现在吸入氢气后，肿瘤杀伤相关的Th1细胞因子和先天免疫细胞（即NK、NKT、总γδT细胞、Vδ1 T细胞和Vδ2 T细胞）都被明显激活，血液中调节性T细胞的比例明显下降。结论是，氢气可以挽救NSCLC患者衰竭和衰老的淋巴细胞的功能。可以设想，如果在吸入氢气后进行冷冻消融，被氢气 "拯救 "的杀伤性免疫细胞将被冷冻消融的癌细胞释放的肿瘤抗原进一步激活，从而改善患者的免疫状态和冷冻治疗效果。