Good news for liver cancer patients: AIG study

The study indicated that a combination of Atezolizumab-bevacizumab drugs is safe and effective in treating liver cancer patients in real world settings.

Hyderabad: Good news for liver cancer patients! A combination of drugs used in treatment of liver cancer patients has proved to be very effective in disease control and resolution of tumour, a peer-reviewed study taken-up by Hyderabad-based Asian Institute of Gastroenterology (AIG), on Wednesday said.

The results of the study, which included liver cancer patients from Hyderabad and Jaipur, and published in Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hepatology (July-August, 2023), have indicated that a combination of Atezolizumab-bevacizumab drugs is safe and effective in treating liver cancer patients in real world settings.

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Till now, there were no studies from India that reported the safety and efficacy of this combination drug in real-world settings where most of the patients, who were part of the study, were in an advanced stage of liver cancer.

Liver cancer patients from AIG Hospitals, Hyderabad and Mahatma Gandhi Hospitals, Jaipur, between November 1, 2020 and July 1, 2022, underwent a minimum of at least 3-cycles of Atezolizumab-bevacizumab drug therapy. The patients were suffering from liver cancer due to a variety of ailments including alcohol consumption (cirrohosis), non-alcoholic Hepatitis, Hepatitits B and C.

The major take away from study was the Disease Control Rate, which is the percentage of people who after receiving this treatment, either showed improvement (partial response) or at least didn’t get worse (stable disease) was 66.1 percent. The Overall positive Response (ORR), also known as the Objective Response Rare from the study was 38.7 percent, indicating that they responded well to the treatment.

A total of 25.8 percent of the patients who were part of the study group showed partial resolution of the tumour while 12.9 percent of patients achieved complete resolution of the tumor, the AIG study said.

The combination of locoregional therapy (minimally invasive surgeries) along with the Atezolizumab-bevacizumab drugs is an upcoming strategy to achieve a complete response i.e. absence of all detectable cancer after completion of treatment, and prolong survival, the researchers said.

Patients who received Y90-TARE (procedure to target tumour without damaging healthy tissue of the liver tumor) followed by Atezolizumab-bevacizumab therapy have achieved 100 percent overall positive response from the patients, the study said.