Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is one of the leading causes of cancer-related death since most patients are diagnosed at advanced stage and the current systemic treatment options using ...molecular-targeted drugs remain unsatisfactory. However, the recent success of cancer immunotherapies has revolutionized the landscape of cancer therapy. Since HCC is characterized by metachronous multicentric occurrence, immunotherapies that induce systemic and durable responses could be an appealing treatment option. Despite the suppressive milieu of the liver and tumor immunosurveillance escape mechanisms, clinical studies of checkpoint inhibitors in patients with advanced HCC have yielded promising results. Here, we provide an update on recent advances in HCC immunotherapies. First, we describe the unique tolerogenic properties of hepatic immunity and its interaction with HCC and then review the status of already or nearly available immune checkpoint blockade-based therapies as well as other immunotherapy strategies at the preclinical or clinical trial stage.
Contrast-enhanced computed tomography (CECT) is generally used to evaluate the response to treatment of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC); however, CECT is unsuitable for the early prediction of ...therapeutic effects and frequent monitoring. We aimed to investigate the usefulness of our simplified method for the quantification of tumor vascularity using contrast-enhanced ultrasound (CEUS) with perfluorobutane microbubbles Sonazoid
®
(GE Healthcare, Oslo, Norway) to predict the therapeutic effect of lenvatinib. Among the 13 patients studied, nine who had more than a 20% reduction in tumor vascularity within 2 weeks of starting treatment experienced complete response or partial response at 8–12 weeks as assessed by CECT. In contrast, three patients without reductions and one patient with only a slight decrease in tumor vascularity had a poor response to lenvatinib. Quantitative assessment of tumor vascularity by our simplified CEUS-based method could be a useful predictor of therapeutic responses to lenvatinib in patients with HCC.
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