Exploring the Future Treatment Landscape of Hepatocellular Carcinoma

Richard S. Finn, MD, an assistant professor of clinical medicine at the Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and director of the Signal Transduction and Therapeutics Program at the Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center at UCLA, discusses how he sees the field of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) evolving in the future.

When he was asked the same question in 2007 when sorafenib (Nexavar) was approved, he said he believed we were going to see so much activity in HCC. However, he notes that this prediction may not have been perfect because it took a long time to get another drug approved after that.

There has since been a burst of data, including findings from the IMbrave150 trial, which Finn says has launched the field of HCC forward dramatically. He believes we may see more triplet regimens or agents with totally different mechanisms of action in the HCC space.

We need to take the time to think about that carefully rather than empirically adding agents and getting negative data, says Finn. Moving these highly effective novel therapies and regimens into earlier lines of therapy for HCC will have the biggest impact. Finn hopes that doing so will increase cure rates after surgery or chemoembolization.

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