This Week in Oncology: Advances in Hepatocellular Carcinoma and Lung Cancer

This week's research highlights diverse therapeutic strategies across several solid tumors. In the New England Journal of Medicine, a meta-analysis explored the impact of combining local treatments, such as TACE or HAIC, with systemic therapies involving immune checkpoint inhibitors and tyrosine kinase inhibitors for patients with hepatocellular carcinoma ^[1].

The findings suggest that this combination may improve response rates and survival outcomes in these patients ^[1].

Moving to pulmonary oncology, a Phase 3 trial published in the Lancet (London, England) examined the role of sacituzumab tirumotecan combined with pembrolizumab. The study reported that adding sacituzumab tirumotecan to pembrolizumab significantly extended progression-free survival in patients with advanced NSCLC ^[2].

In other areas of clinical practice, research published in the European Journal of Cancer provided a translational analysis of a Phase III trial involving 555 patients with endocrine-resistant HR+ / HER2- metastatic breast cancer. The authors found that low baseline thymidine kinase 1 activity (TKa) of ≤250 DuA was associated with longer progression-free and overall survival, specifically an overall survival of 38.5 months ^[4].

Additionally, several studies focused on neurological and diagnostic markers. A meta-analysis in the Journal of Molecular Medicine evaluated CSF IL-10 for central nervous system lymphoma, reporting a sensitivity of 79.8% and specificity of 94.8%, which suggests high diagnostic accuracy and strong rule-in utility ^[3].

Finally, a meta-analysis published in Neurology: Clinical Practice reviewed real-world clinical data on perampanel for brain tumor-related epilepsy, where the analysis found that 42% of patients achieved seizure freedom ^[5].