Precision Medicine in Improving Treatment Outcomes in Hepatocellular Carcinoma: Clinical Outcomes and Advancements

Liver cancer ranks sixth among the most commonly diagnosed malignancies and 90% of liver cancer cases are of Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Treatment options for HCC include resection, radiotherapy, and systemic therapies with chemotherapeutic drugs. The late diagnosis of HCC prevents successful treatment by surgical resection. Further, conventional treatment modalities such as chemotherapy and radiotherapy are ineffective in all patients as tumors are heterogeneous. The heterogeneous nature of tumors enables them to have genetic variations and express specific proteins in different patients. This inherent variability of cancer creates the need to move to a growing field of medicine, i.e., precision/personalized medicine. Precision medicine is based on complementing the molecular profile of a patient to a targeted therapy. In clinical practice, the transition from a stage-based approach to a targeted therapy-based approach is necessary for determining the most appropriate treatment plan for a patient. The clinical outcomes for patients could be improved on a large scale if the discoveries in tumour biology are applied efficiently in clinics. This chapter discusses the research on precision medicine for improving treatment outcomes in HCC patients, especially advanced cancers. It also includes the clinical studies of novel therapeutics used for the targeted therapy of advanced liver cancer patients. Concisely, we summarize the recent studies on the applications of precision and personalized medicine.

Keywords: Cancer management, Clinical trials, Hepatocellular carcinoma, Precision/personalised medicine, Targeted therapy.