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Today/Oncology
Oncology · The big question

Triple Therapy Shows Promise for Advanced Liver Cancer

HILL: the efficacy and safety of hepatic arterial infusion chemotherapy with the FOLFOX regimen combined with lenvatinib and the PD-L1 inhibitor durvalumab in unresectable hepatocellular carcinoma: a prospective, single-arm, phase 2 clinical trial.

PubMed1 min readAI-assisted summary
Editorial illustration for HILL: the efficacy and safety of hepatic arterial infusion chemotherapy with the FOLFOX regimen combined with lenvatinib and the PD-L1 inhibitor durvalumab in unresectable hepatocellular carcinoma: a prospective, single-arm, phase 2 clinical trial.
Editorial illustration

Summary

When liver cancer is diagnosed at an advanced stage, it is often impossible to remove with surgery. To help patients facing this tough diagnosis, researchers recently tested a novel three-pronged attack. The trial gave 40 patients a combination of chemotherapy delivered directly to the liver, a targeted cancer drug called lenvatinib, and an immunotherapy drug named durvalumab that helps the immune system detect and fight tumors.

The results of this phase 2 trial were highly encouraging. The treatment controlled the disease in 95 percent of the patients and successfully shrank tumors in 75 percent of them. On average, patients lived for nearly 16 months without their cancer growing or spreading. Remarkably, the treatment shrank tumors so much in seven patients (about 17 percent) that surgeons were able to successfully remove their cancer entirely. In three of those surgical cases, doctors found no remaining active cancer cells. Overall, 94 percent of the patients were still alive two years after the treatment began.

Importantly, the therapy proved to be quite safe. About 85 percent of patients experienced only mild to moderate side effects. Doctors did not observe any severe or life-threatening complications, which suggests the treatment is well tolerated by the body.

Why it matters.

Advanced liver cancer that cannot be surgically removed has historically had a very grim outlook. This triple-combination approach offers a glimmer of hope by showing that intensive, upfront treatment might not only stall the disease but actually shrink tumors enough to make surgery a viable option again. For patients, converting an inoperable tumor into an operable one is a massive breakthrough that could significantly extend survival.

While these early survival and tumor shrinkage rates are impressive, the scientific community will need more data before this becomes a standard clinical practice. The current study was small, involving only 40 individuals, and it did not include a control group for direct comparison. Larger, randomized clinical trials are now necessary to fully confirm these benefits and ensure the treatment works safely on a broader patient population.

From the source

The story in numbers.

Enrolled patients
40
Median progression-free survival (PFS)
15.8 months
Objective response rate (ORR)
75.0%
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