Cancer Treatment Today

The only proven potentially curative therapy for HCC remains surgical, either hepatic resection or liver transplantation, and patients with single small HCC ( 5 cm) or up to three lesions 3 cm should be referred for assessment for these treatment modalities. However, these treatments cannot be applied in metastatic disease.  In regard to chemotherapy, palliative systemic therapy with doxorubicin (Adriamycin) has been considered a standard of therapy

It is a fairly rare for benign liver lesions causing pain and there are no specific guidelines for thist. However, the literature contains many reports of this procedure being performed for non-cancer diagnosis(2,4). In experienced hands, laparoscopic liver resection is a favorable alternative to open resection. Perioperative morbidity and mortality and long-term survival after laparoscopic resection  appear to be comparable to those after open

Lay Summary: TACE is often used for hepatocellular carcinoma and neuroendocrine cancers of the liver.   This technique takes advantage of the fact that HCC is a very vascular (contains many blood vessels) tumor and gets its blood supply exclusively from the branches of the hepatic artery. This procedure is similar to intra-arterial infusion of chemotherapy. But in TACE, there is the additional step of blocking (embolizing) the small blood vessels

Metastatic hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is a difficult problem to treat. Nexavar has recently been FDA approved for HCC. Among other options are older drugs, such as capecitabine (Xeloda).  A pilot study showed that capecitabine (1000 mg/m2 twice daily for 14 days every 21 days) achieved a response rate of 19% in patients with advanced biliary cancer . A larger review showed that at 2,000 mg/m2/d, capecitabine produced a 50% response rate and

Cryosurgical ablation, or cryosurgery, involves freezing of target tissues, usually by inserting a probe into the tumor through which coolant is circulated. Cryosurgery may be performed as an open surgical technique or as a closed procedure under laparoscopic or ultrasound guidance. National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN, 2007) hepatocellular carcinoma guidelines state that microwave ablation, cryotherapy, radiofrequency ablation, and percutaneous

Temsirolimus is a mTOR inhibitor.  It is an FDA approved for renal cell carcinoma. The mTOR pathway is activated in 40-50% of patients with hepatocellular cancer (HCC). In different models (i.e., hepatoma cell lines and implanted HCC tumors in rats), mTOR inhibitors (mTORIs) were effective in reducing cell growth and tumor vascularity. Synergistic effects were observed for mTORIs and chemotherapeutic agents in these studies. Clinical data are,

Charged-particle beams consisting of protons or helium ions are a type of particulate radiation therapy that contrast with conventional electromagnetic (i.e., photon) radiation therapy due to the unique properties of minimal scatter as the particulate beams pass through the tissue, and deposition of the ionizing energy at a precise depth (i.e., the Bragg Peak). Thus radiation exposure to surrounding normal tissues is minimized. The theoretical advantages