Researchers discover treatment that suppresses liver cancer

A cancer translational research team consisting of physicians, and basic scientists created an integrative therapy that combined minimally invasive radiofrequency ablation (RFA) with the chemotherapy drug sunitinib. Individually, each treatment has a modest effect in the treatment of liver cancer. The team hypothesized that pairing the two treatments would have a profound effect by activating an immune response to target and destroy liver cancer cells. That's exactly what their research revealed.

"We treated tumor-bearing mice with sunitinib to suppress the cancer cells' ability to evade detection by the immune system, then the RFA acted as a spark that ignited the anti-tumor immune response," said principal investigator Guangfu Li, PhD, DVM, Department of Surgery and Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology.

The team tested this approach by dividing the mice into four groups: a control group, a group that received only sunitinib, a group that received only RFA, and a group that received both RFA and sunitinib. The researchers monitored tumor progression in each mouse via magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) over 10 weeks. They discovered the mice receiving combination therapy experienced significantly slowed tumor growth. The life span of the mice in the combination therapy group was significantly longer than all of the other groups.