A combination cancer therapy that is effective against treatment-resistant hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) by inhibiting tumor growth and increasing survival has been identified by researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH). In a paper published in the Journal for ImmunoTherapy of Cancer, the investigators describe how the dual therapy — which combines the multikinase inhibitor drug regorafenib to “reprogram” the tumor immune microenvironment, and programmed cell death 1 (PD1) antibodies to stimulate anti-tumor immunity — improved survival in mouse models of HCC beyond what each therapy could have achieved alone.
“The holy grail of immunotherapy in treating solid cancers like HCC is to draw cancer-fighting T-cells inside the tumor,” explains Dan G. Duda, DMD, PhD, director of translational research in GI Radiation Oncology at MGH and senior author of the study. “We found that regorafenib delivered at the right intermediate dose tricks cancer cells into expressing a chemokine known as CXCL10 which, in turn, triggers intratumoral T-cell infiltration… Continue reading.