Patients with liver cancer who received immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) before surgery—including those who would not have been eligible for surgery by conventional criteria—had similar outcomes to patients who received surgery upfront, according to results from a retrospective study in . "There is a group of patients with high-risk who, in a contemporary era, may have through aggressive treatment with followed by surgery," said Mark Yarchoan, MD, senior author of the study and an associate professor of oncology at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center. While immunotherapy has become a mainstay for the treatment of advanced or metastatic liver cancer, the primary curative treatment modality for patients with early-stage disease is surgery alone.
Only around 30% of patients are eligible for surgical resection due to factors such as , proximity to critical structures, the presence of multiple tumor foci, and safety concerns, explained Mari Nakazawa, MD, a clinical research fellow at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center and first author of the study. She added that even patients who receive curative intent surgery often experience a recurrence. "There's a strong unmet need to expand the number of patients who may be eligible for surgery and, further, to transform more patients with early-stage liver cancer into long-term survivors of this disease," Nakazawa said.
Studies of other cancers have shown that neoadjuvant immunotherapy may mitigate some high-risk features and.