Survival outcomes with adjuvant immunotherapy after hepatic resection in patients with intermediate/advanced (BCLC stage B/C) hepatocellular carcinoma: Insights from a propensity-matched multicenter study.

Abstract

4096 Background: With the growing interest in adjuvant immunotherapy for reducing recurrence and improving prognosis after hepatic resection in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), particularly in high-risk patients, this study aims to evaluate the impact of adjuvant immunotherapy on long-term recurrence and survival in patients with intermediate/advanced HCC. Methods: A prospective multicenter database was utilized to identify patients who underwent curative-intent resection for Barcelona Clinic Liver Cancer (BCLC) stage B/C HCC. Propensity score matching (PSM) was employed to equate recurrence-free survival (RFS) and overall survival (OS) between patients receiving adjuvant immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) and those who did not. Multivariate Cox-regression analysis was used to identify independent predictors of RFS and OS. Results: Out of 627 patients, 109 (23.3%) received adjuvant immunotherapy, with most ICI-related adverse reactions being grade I-II. The ICI agents used among these 109 patients were tislelizumab (51.4%, n=56), sintilimab (29.3%, n=32), camrelizumab (9.2%, n=10), pembrolizumab (6.4%, n=7), and toripalimab (3.7%, n=4). All patients receiving adjuvant immunotherapy completed at least 3 months of ICI treatment, with no patients discontinuing the treatment due to irAEs. PSM resulted in 99 matched pairs with comparable baseline characteristics. In this cohort, patients receiving adjuvant immunotherapy showed significantly improved median RFS (29.6 vs. 19.3 months, P=0.031) and OS (35.1 vs. 27.8 months, P=0.036) compared to those who did not. Multivariable analyses confirmed adjuvant immunotherapy as an independent factor for better RFS (HR: 0.630; 95% CI: 0.435-0.914; P=0.015) and OS (HR: 0.601; 95% CI: 0.401-0.898; P=0.013). Subgroup analyses suggested prognostic benefits of adjuvant immunotherapy in both intermediate and advanced-stage HCC. Conclusions: This real-world observational study indicates that adjuvant immunotherapy is associated with improved RFS and OS in patients undergoing curative-intent resection for intermediate/advanced HCC. These findings support the need for future randomized controlled trials to establish definitive evidence for this high-risk population.