Lead Investigator: Haitao Zhao, Peking Union Medical College Hospital
Title of Proposal Research: The clinical and prognostic features of acquired resistance to immune-checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) in Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC)
Vivli Data Request: 9908
Funding Source: None
Potential Conflicts of Interest: None
Summary of the Proposed Research:
Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is a type of cancer that develops in the liver and is a common cancer worldwide, causing over 600,000 deaths each year.
Therer are a special kind of proteins on T cells called immune checkpoints. When the body faces infection, these checkpoints help turn the immune system on and fight back. Immune checkpoints also act as brakes on an unwanted response and help avoid accidental attacks against the body’s own immune system. But sometimes cancer cells take advantage of this system, and the cancer cells are able to avoid detection and destruction by the body, therefore the cancer cells are not detected or killed by the immune system. Immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) are a type of medication used in HCC treatment. They work by helping the body’s immune system fight cancer cells more effectively. Immune checkpoint inhibitors block the tumor immunosuppression system and enables immune system to kill tumor cells effectively. The role of ICIs in HCC treatment is becoming increasingly important.
The phenomenon of acquired resistance, in which patients benefit from ICI at first, but get tumor progression after several weeks or months, is long recognized and rapidly identified in clinical situations, but is still poorly understood. We aim to explain the clinical and prognostic features (factors that help predict the outcome of a disease) of acquired resistance in HCC, to analyze its pattern and impact to further treatments. Our findings will provide new insights to therapeutic interventions after resistance and will potentially benefit HCC patients who receive multiple lines of ICI treatment.
The first step of our research is to analyze the occurrence pattern of acquired resistance in our own HCC cohort, including the patients’ baseline characteristics and its impact to future treatment and overall survival. Our findings will then be verified in external data sets.
Requested Studies:
A Phase III, Open-Label, Randomized Study of Atezolizumab in Combination With Bevacizumab Compared With Sorafenib in Patients With Untreated Locally Advanced or Metastatic Hepatocellular Carcinoma
Data Contributor: Roche
Study ID: NCT03434379
Sponsor ID: YO40245