New treatment options emerge for intermediate, advanced HCC

March 7, 2018|Oncology Practice

REPORTING FROM THE 2018 GI CANCERS SYMPOSIUM

In the trial, new intrahepatic lesions were not considered to be progression signaling treatment failure, but rather the natural biology of HCC, Dr. Kudo explained.

With a median follow-up of 2.4 years, median progression-free survival using a new definition of progression – either untreatable “unTACEable” disease or TACE failure/refractoriness (by Japanese Society of Hepatology criteria) – was 25.2 months with TACE plus sorafenib compared with 13.5 months with TACE alone (hazard ratio, 0.59; P = .006). Benefit was similar across patient subgroups.

Overall survival results are not yet mature, according to Dr. Kudo. Overall response rate and disease control rate did not differ significantly between groups.

Adding sorafenib to TACE led to higher rates of certain grade 3 adverse events, including thrombocytopenia (12.8% vs. 2.8%), hand-foot skin reaction (5.1% vs. 0%), and hypertension (10.3% vs. 4.2%). But there were no unexpected events.