Exploring Tislelizumab for Unresectable HCC

Ghassan K. Abou-Alfa, MD, a medical oncologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, discusses the phase 2 study of tislelizumab in patients with unresectable hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC).

The study was conducted in the subgroup of patients with Child-Pugh A and Barcelona Clinical Liver Cancer stage B/C who were previously treated with at least 1 prior systemic therapy.

Tislelizumab achieved durable response in the study and was well-tolerate by patients. According to Abou-Alfa, the data were very encouraging and signal hope for the success of a phase 3 study of tislelizumab, which is ongoing.

Transcript:

0:08 | In brief, we're quite excited that tislelizumab as another anti-PD-1, but with a very important specificity and regard to its mechanisms of action have been evaluated in this phase 2 study and led to the finding of important results, among which is an increase response rate of close to about 13% with importantly, 2 complete responses and 29 partial responses. And if anything, this translated into improvement in outcome, over a medium follow up close to about 9 to 10 months. Median overall survival was 12.4 months and medium progression- free survival was 2.7 months.

0:56 | It is important to note the 1-year overall survival was close to 52%. No doubt that this is very encouraging, especially that the therapy was tolerable. And of course, we look forward for the results of the ongoing randomized phase 3 trial evaluating tislelizumab compared to the standard, sorafenib, as first line therapy for patients with advanced unresectable HCC