Scientists have made a discovery which could lead to the first change in standard liver cancer treatment in 20 years. Two trials have shown that adding immunotherapy to the standard care for a certain type of liver cancer can “significantly” delay its progression.
Hepatocellular carcinoma is the most common form of liver cancer. Patients whose cancer cannot be removed by surgery are currently given a treatment called Tace (trans arterial chemoembolisation), which involves giving chemotherapy into the blood vessel that feeds the tumour.
This is followed by small particle injected into the blood vessel to block the blood supply into the tumour. Experts said standard survival time after this treatment is still only a few months.
Now two new clinical trials, published in the Lancet, found that survival times can increase when immunotherapy is also used. The Emerald-1 trial assessed the use of an immunotherapy called durvalumab and a medication that blocks blood vessel growth, called bevacizumab, in combination with Tace.
Researchers studied 616 liver cancer patients from around the world. They found that those who had Tace and a dummy drug, known as a placebo, saw their liver cancer delayed for an average of 8.2 months.
Those who were given durvalumab and bevacizumab alongside Tace did not see their cancer progress for an average of 15 months. A similar trial, called Leap-012, examined immunotherapy pembrolizumab and a cancer growth blocker called lenvatinib alongside Tace among 480 people around the world. They found that those given both treatments alongside Tace did not see their liver cancer progress for an average of 14.6 months, compared with 10 months among those who had Tace and a placebo.
Experts from University Hospital Wurzburg in Germany wrote: “Tace plus lenvatinib plus pembrolizumab showed significant, clinically meaningful improvement in progression-free survival in patients with unresectable, non-metastatic hepatocellular carcinoma compared with Tace plus placebo.”