New treatment extends lives of people with most common type of liver cancer

For the first time in over a decade, scientists have identified a first-line treatment that significantly improves survival for people with hepatocellular carcinoma, the most common type of liver cancer.Researchers found that a  combination of atezolizumab, an immunotherapy drug that boosts the body ’s natural defenses, and bevacizumab, an anti-angiogenesis drug that inhibits the growth of tumors’ blood vessels, improved overall survival and reduced the risk of death by 42%. It also decreased the risk of the disease worsening by 41%, and the percentage of patients whose cancer shrank or disappeared more than doubled.Results from the clinical trial were published May 13  in the New England Journal of Medicine, and the drug combination is currently being reviewed for approval under the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Real-Time Oncology Review pilot program.“The therapy is a real game-changer for people diagnosed with this aggressive disease,”said the study ’s principal investigator and lead author, Dr. Richard Finn, a professor of medicine at theDavid Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and director of the signal transduction and therapeutics program at theUCLA Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center. “We now have a new therapy that not only improves survival for people with the disease, which is very challenging to treat, but that helps them live longer while maintaining a high qualityof life. ”Currently, people diagnosed with advanced liver cancer have limit...
Source: UCLA Newsroom: Health Sciences - Category: Universities & Medical Training Source Type: news