Future perspectives in hepatocellular carcinoma

Abstract

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is one of the most common and lethal malignancies worldwide. Due to late diagnosis and advanced underlying liver cirrhosis, only limited treatment options with marginal clinical benefits have been available in up to 70% of patients. However, major progress has been achieved with regard to surveillance, early diagnosis, and multimodal treatment approaches during the last years leading to an improvement in prognosis. Particularly, the increasing knowledge of molecular hepatocarcinogenesis today provides the opportunity for targeted therapy. The multikinase inhibitor sorafenib has broadened the therapeutic horizon for patients with advanced disease and is currently under investigation for patients in early and intermediate stages as adjuvant therapy after resection/local ablation or in combination with transcatheter arterial chemoembolization. Future research will continue to unravel the key signaling cascades in different subclasses of HCC patients according to their genomic and proteomic profiling. These approaches bear the potential to individualize anticancer therapy, in the end allowing treatment of those benefiting most and excluding those who do not. This article shortly reviews the current knowledge in the management of HCC and provides insights into future perspectives with a special focus on recent progress in multidisciplinary treatment modalities.