Advances in haematology and oncology 2011: hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC)

Excerpt

Liver cancer, in particular hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), has become a very active area of research since the successful introduction in 2008 of Sorafenib into the clinical practice of treating patients with advanced stage HCC. Since then, a sizeable number of clinical trials have been initiated to improve the outcome that can be achieved by using Sorafenib even further and also to move medical treatment of HCC from the palliative more into direction of adjuvant or neoadjuvant treatments in conjunction with curative treatment approaches. At the same time, a large number of studies into the molecular carcinogenesis of HCC as well as into molecular classifications and molecular predictors of treatment outcomes have been started. The number of publications in the area of HCC has dramatically increased in the last three years. However, in the area of molecular classifications and molecular predictors for treatment response, no breakthrough discoveries have been reported in 2011. …