The first new drug for second-line treatment of liver cancer in China has been approved

Source: Igua yesterday (December 12), 2017-12-13, Bayer announced that its targeted antitumor drug, regofinib (trade name: baivango), was officially approved by CFDA for HCC patients who had previously received sorafenib treatment, which is also the first new drug approved for second-line treatment of HCC in China According to the world cancer report 2015 issued by the World Health Organization, in 2015, there were 854000 new liver cancer cases and 810000 deaths worldwide, including 466000 new liver cancer cases and 422000 deaths in China, which seriously threatened the health and life of all human beings Because most of the patients with liver cancer have basic liver disease, the onset of the disease is insidious, the early symptoms are not obvious or typical, early diagnosis is difficult, when the diagnosis is often lost the opportunity of surgery, intervention and ablation and other local treatment is effective, but often occurs metastasis progress, therefore, for the middle and late stage of liver cancer, systematic treatment is essential Qin Shukui, head of the national hepatoma expert group, chairman of the hepatoma special committee of the Chinese society of clinical oncology and the PLA cancer center of Nanjing Bayi hospital, said, "molecular targeted drug sorafenib first-line treatment can significantly prolong the survival period of patients with advanced hepatoma, and become the standard treatment; however, after treatment, some patients will have disease progress, so second-line treatment drugs are urgently needed Regofinib, as a new targeted drug, has been approved as a second-line treatment indication for liver cancer in Europe and America This time, it is approved by CFDA as a priority in China, which can solve the urgent treatment needs of this kind of patients, and it is worthy of clinical application " It is understood that as an oral multi kinase inhibitor, regofinib can block a variety of protein kinases involved in angiogenesis, tumor formation, metastasis and tumor immunity during tumor growth and progression, including VEGFR 1-3, Tie-2, Raf-1, kit, RET, Raf-1, BRAF, PDGFR, FGFR and csf1r These kinases, acting alone or jointly, control tumor growth, interstitial microenvironment formation and disease progression In December 2016, the international multicenter stage III response study published in the lancet evaluated the efficacy and safety of regofinib in patients with advanced liver cancer after sorafenib treatment The results suggested that regofinib significantly improved the overall survival of patients (median OS 10.6 months vs 7.8 months, P < 0.0001), and the risk of death was significantly reduced by 37% in the regofinib group compared with the placebo group (Figure 1) Figure 1 Regofinib significantly improved OS progression free survival (PFS) in patients with advanced liver cancer after sorafenib treatment Regofinib group also had significant advantages (median PFS 3.1 months vs 1.5 months, P < 0.0001, figure 2) The above treatment benefits were maintained in all predefined subgroups In addition, patients treated with regofinib also had higher remission rate and disease control rate Figure 2 The exploratory analysis of PFS response study of patients with advanced liver cancer after sorafenib treatment significantly improved by regofinib shows that the sequential treatment of sorafenib and regofinib can prolong the median survival time of patients with liver cancer to 26 months from the beginning of the previous sorafenib treatment This is undoubtedly a breakthrough for the medical treatment of liver cancer, which has not experienced substantial progress for a long time.