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Adding TACE to Lenvatinib Improves Survival in Liver Cancer
Roxanne Nelson, RN, BSN
January 25, 2022
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SAN FRANCISCO — Adding transarterial chemoembolization (TACE) to treatment with lenvatinib (Lenvima) significantly improved survival compared to levantinib alone in patients with advanced hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) in the phase 3 LAUNCH trial.
The combination of TACE and levantinib "represents a potential new first-line treatment option for patients with advanced HCC," said study author Ming Kuang, MD, PhD, professor in hepatobiliary surgery and interventional ultrasound and director of the cancer center in the First Affiliated Hospital, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China.
The combination of the two approaches was "safe and effective for patients with advanced hepatocellular carcinoma and demonstrated remarkable improvements in overall survival, progression-free survival, and overall response rate, as well as acceptable toxicity," he said.
Patients receiving combination therapy achieved a median overall survival of 17.8 months, compared with 11.5 months in the lenvatinib arm (HR, 0.45; P < .001). Similarly, median progression-free survival also favored lenvatinib plus TACE: 10.6 months vs 6.4 months (HR, 0.43; P < .001).
The study results were presented here at the Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium (GICS) 2022.
Discussing the abstract, Anthony B. El-Khoueiry, MD, from the University of Southern California, Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center, Los Angeles, said the results are "intruiging," and he commended the researchers on carrying out this study.
"It reinforces the feasibility of combined liver directed and systemic therapy," he said.
"However, it does not change the standard of care in the US," he cautioned.
"Systemic therapy backbone is not the standard of care, and the design of this study was not optimal to answer the question of whether the addition of liver-directed therapy in advanced HCC improves outcomes," he added.
EL-Khoueiry pointed out that these new results from the LAUNCH trial contrast with two studies that looked at liver-directed plus a systemic therapy. Both of those previous studies used sorafenib, one utilizing Y-90 and the other conventional TACE.
Both of those studies were negative, he said. "But there were differences between these studies and LAUNCH."
Aside from the fact that they used sorafenib and not levantinib, another difference was that the patient population of LAUNCH was younger than in the other two studies. In addition, most patients in the LAUCH trial had hepatitis B, and they received a higher number of TACE treatments than in the previous studies. "One can argue that maybe treatment selection was more optimal," El-Khoueiry commented.
He also noted that "the control arm of lenvatinib underperformed, as sorafenib median overall survival in previous trials ranges from 13–15 months. We would have expected lenvatinib to perform at least as well or better." (The median overall survival was 11.5 months).
Improved Outcomes With Combination Therapy
The LAUNCH study involved 338 treatment-naive patients with advanced HCC from 12 hospitals in China who were randomly assigned to receive either lenvatinib plus TACE (n = 170) or lenvatinib alone (n = 168).
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