Friend or Foe? Locoregional Therapies and Immunotherapies in the Current Hepatocellular Treatment Landscape

Abstract

Over the last several decades, a number of new treatment options for patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) have been developed. While treatment decisions for some patients remain clear cut, a large numbers of patients have multiple treatment options, and it can be hard for multidisciplinary teams to come to unanimous decisions on which treatment strategy or sequence of treatments is best. This article reviews the available data with regard to two treatment strategies, immunotherapies and locoregional therapies, with a focus on the potential of locoregional therapies to be combined with checkpoint inhibitors to improve outcomes in patients with locally advanced HCC. In this review, the available data on the immunomodulatory effects of locoregional therapies is discussed along with available clinical data on outcomes when the two strategies are combined.

Keywords

• transarterial radioembolization
• transarterial chemoembolization
• ablation
• checkpoint inhibitors
• immunotherapies
• hepatocellular carcinoma