CD8A and hepatocellular carcinoma: By comparison, CD8+ T cells were rarely seen in the HCC from the vehicle (aldometanib-untreated) group (which exhibited sparse staining for CD8a; Fig. 4a–d; Supplementary information, Fig. S8a–g), consistent with previous studies reporting an immunosuppressive microenvironment in HCC.61,62 In addition, knockout of AMPKα in the host liver blocked such induced enrichment of CD8+ T cells in the orthotopic allografts from either wild-type or AMPKα−/− Hepa1-6 cells (Fig. 4d), whereas depletion of AMPKα in the Hepa1-6 orthotopic allografts did not abolish the enrichment of CD8+ T cells (Fig. 4d).