Efficacy and Safety of Tyrosine Kinase Inhibitors Alone or Combination with Programmed Death-1 Inhibitors in Treating of Hepatitis C-Related Hepatocellular Carcinoma

Abstract

Jin Lei,1,* Sibo Yang,1,* Bowen Chen,2,* Linzhi Zhang,3 Tao Yan,3 Gangqi Yang,1 Yue Chen,1 Yinyin Li,3 Yinying Lu,1,3,4 Shi Zuo1,5 1School of Clinical Medicine, Guizhou Medical University, Guiyang, People’s Republic of China; 2 302 Clinical Medical School, Peking University, Beijing, People’s Republic of China; 3Comprehensive Liver Cancer Center, the 5th Medical Center of the PLA General Hospital, Beijing, People’s Republic of China; 4Center for Synthetic and Systems Biology, School of Life Sciences, Tsinghua, Beijing, People’s Republic of China; 5Department of Hepatobiliary Surgery, The Affiliated Hospital of Guizhou Medical University, Guiyang, People’s Republic of China*These authors contributed equally to this workCorrespondence: Yinying Lu; Shi Zuo, Tel [phone], Email [email protected]; [email protected]: Tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKI) combined with programmed cell death-1 (PD-1) inhibitor is a potential treatment modality for patients with HCV-related unresectable hepatocellular carcinoma (uHCC).Methods: The participants of the present work included the patients having HCV-related uHCC who were treated with TKI monotherapy (TKI group) or TKI combined with PD-1 inhibitors therapy (combination group) in our center between June 2018 and June 2021. In addition, the patients were classified into RNA-positive and RNA-negative groups based on whether or not the baseline HCV RNA was detectable. The overall survival (OS) was used as the primary efficacy endpoint, while progression-free survival (PFS), objective response rate (ORR), and disease control rate (DCR) were used as secondary endpoints. The adverse events were recorded and evaluated.Results: Among the 67 patients contained this work, 43 patients were classified into the TKI group, while 24 patients formed the combination group. In relative to the TKI group, the combination group presented notably better median OS (21 months vs 13 months, p = 0.043) and median PFS (8 months vs 5 months, p = 0.005). No evident differences were observed between the two groups in terms of the DCR (58.1% vs 79.2%, p = 0.080), ORR (13.9% vs 25.0%, p = 0.425) and the incidence of grade 3– 4 adverse events (34.8% vs 33.3%, p = 1.000). In addition, there existed no obvious difference between the RNA-positive group and RNA-negative group in terms of median OS (14 months vs 19 months, p = 0.578) and median PFS (4 months vs 6 months, p = 0.238).Conclusion: The patients having HCV-related uHCC after being treated with the TKI and PD-1 inhibitor combination therapy exhibited a better prognosis and manageable toxicity compared to the patients who underwent TKI monotherapy.Keywords: hepatitis C virus, hepatitis C virus reactivation, hepatocellular carcinoma, tyrosine kinase inhibitor, programmed death-1 inhibitor

Keywords

• hepatitis c virus
• hepatitis c virus reactivation
• hepatocellular carcinoma
• tyrosine kinase inhibitor
• programmed death-1 inhibitor