Yang Jia, Eresen Aydin, Scotti Alessandro, Cai Kejia, Zhang Zhuoli
Department of Radiology, Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University Chicago, IL, 60611, USA.
Department of Radiology, University of Illinois at Chicago Chicago, IL, 60612, USA.
Am J Cancer Res. 2021 Feb 1;11(2):337-349. eCollection 2021.
Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is the most frequent malignancy of the liver, which is considered the fourth leading cause of cancer-related death in the United States. Liver transplant and surgical resection are curative treatments for HCC, but only 10-15% of HCC patients are eligible candidates. The FDA-approved sorafenib is a multi-kinase inhibitor systemic therapy for advanced HCC that extends the overall survival by over 3 months when compared with placebo. Adoptive transfer of Natural Killer (NK) cells holds great promise for clinical cancer treatment. However, only limited clinical benefit has been achieved in cancer patients. Therefore, there is currently considerable interest in development of the combination of sorafenib and NK cells for the treatment of HCC patients. However, the mechanism of how sorafenib affects the function of NK cells remains to be comprehensively clarified. In this paper, we will discuss NK cell-based immunotherapies that are currently under preclinical and clinical investigation and its potential combination with sorafenib for improving the survival of HCC patients.
肝细胞癌（HCC）是最常见的肝脏恶性肿瘤，在美国被认为是癌症相关死亡的第四大主要原因。肝移植和手术切除是HCC的治愈性治疗方法，但只有10%-15%的HCC患者符合候选条件。美国食品药品监督管理局（FDA）批准的索拉非尼是一种用于晚期HCC的多激酶抑制剂全身疗法，与安慰剂相比，可将总生存期延长3个月以上。自然杀伤（NK）细胞的过继性转移在临床癌症治疗中具有很大的前景。然而，癌症患者仅获得了有限的临床益处。因此，目前人们对开发索拉非尼和NK细胞联合治疗HCC患者的方法兴趣浓厚。然而，索拉非尼如何影响NK细胞功能的机制仍有待全面阐明。在本文中，我们将讨论目前正在进行临床前和临床研究的基于NK细胞的免疫疗法及其与索拉非尼联合使用以提高HCC患者生存率的潜力。
