Discussing Treatment Options for Patients With HCC

Joan Culpepper-Morgan, MD, chief of gastroenterology at Harlem Hospital in New York City, provides an overview on different treatment approaches for patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC).

In the first-line, treatment options for advanced HCC include lenvatinib (Lenvima) and sorafenib (Nexavar). The combination of atezolizumab (Tecentriq) and bevacizumab (Avastin), as well as durvalumab (Imfinzi) plus tremelimumab (Imjudo), are also some immune checkpoint inhibitors available in this space. In addition, curative intent therapies are also often used for the treatment of patients with HCC.

Further, patients have access to a variety of treatments, including liver-directed therapy, resection, ablation, and surgical intervention. According to Morgan, diagnosing the tumor as early as possible is of the utmost importance when treating this patient population. Because of this need, experts are continuously working to provide new options for patients and are always pushing to grow the treatment landscape of HCC.

Transcription:

0:10 | Usually, HCC has been treated, I would call it, anatomically. If we could diagnose the tumor early enough, the patient could get either chemoembolization of the tumor in a particular segment of their liver, meaning that an interventional radiologist could put in a catheter into the artery that feeds the tumor, and actually try to kill the tumor that way with chemotherapy directed at the tumor at that site.

0:52 | Other ways of, of anatomically attacking the tumor include radiofrequency ablation, [which is] basically a targeted microwave. Just placing that very targeted microwave probe that's frequently done by a surgeon into the tumor is accessible, and also killing the tumor in that spot. Other options have included surgery, just removing that segment of the liver, if it's really evident that it has not spread. When the tumor has spread though, we are looking at more chemotherapy-directed medications that could actually kill the tumor.