Abstract
Hepatocellular cancer is the sixth most frequently diagnosed malignant disease worldwide, and was responsible for tens of millions of deaths in 2020; however, treatment options for patients with advanced hepatocellular carcinoma remain limited. Immunotherapy has undergone rapid development over recent years, especially in the field of immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs). These drugs aim to activate and enhance antitumor immunity and represent a new prospect for the treatment of patients with advanced cancer. Nevertheless, only a small proportion of liver cancer patients currently benefit from ICI-based treatment, highlighting the need to better understand how ICIs and tumors interact, as well as identify predictive biomarkers for immunotherapeutic responses. In this review, we highlight clinical trials and basic research in hepatocellular carcinoma, with a particular focus on predictive biomarkers for the therapeutic efficacy of ICIs. Predictive biomarkers for immune-related adverse events are also discussed.
Highlights
Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) accounts for over 80% of all primary liver malignancies, while liver cancer ranked as the sixth most frequently diagnosed cancer in 2020, resulting in 83 million deaths [1]
In HCC, several studies have been conducted to identify predictive biomarkers that would allow the stratification of patients who could benefit from immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) treatment, few have been prospectively validated and none have resulted in the rewriting of the current clinical guidelines or entered into clinical practice
We summarized the progress of immunotherapy for HCC over recent years, with a particular emphasis on predictive biomarkers
Summary
Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) accounts for over 80% of all primary liver malignancies, while liver cancer ranked as the sixth most frequently diagnosed cancer in 2020, resulting in 83 million deaths [1]. Because immunotherapy for HCC is still in its infancy, studies relating to predictive biomarkers for ICI treatment response are scarce.
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