Comparative Efficacy and Safety of Atezolizumab and Bevacizumab Between Hepatocellular Carcinoma Patients with Viral and Non-viral Infection: A Japanese Multicenter Observational Study

Overview

Journal Cancer Med

Specialty Oncology

Date 2022 Oct 13

PMID 36226511

Authors

Takeshi Hatanaka

Satoru Kakizaki

Atsushi Hiraoka

Toshifumi Tada

Masashi Hirooka

Kazuya Kariyama

Joji Tani

Masanori Atsukawa

Koichi Takaguchi

Ei Itobayashi

Shinya Fukunishi

Kunihiko Tsuji

Toru Ishikawa

Kazuto Tajiri

Hironori Ochi

Satoshi Yasuda

Hidenori Toyoda

Chikara Ogawa

Takashi Nishimura

Noritomo Shimada

Kazuhito Kawata

Hisashi Kosaka

Takaaki Tanaka

Hideko Ohama

Kazuhiro Nouso

Asahiro Morishita

Akemi Tsutsui

Takuya Nagano

Norio Itokawa

Tomomi Okubo

Taeang Arai

Michitaka Imai

Atsushi Naganuma

Yohei Koizumi

Shinichiro Nakamura

Kouji Joko

Masaki Kaibori

Hiroko Iijima

Yoichi Hiasa

Takashi Kumada

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Aim: This study compared the efficacy and safety of atezolizumab and bevacizumab (Atez/Bev) in patients with viral and non-viral infection in clinical settings.

Methods: We conducted the retrospective cohort study of 323 BCLC stage B or C hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) patients with Child-Pugh class A, and a performance status of 0 or 1 who started Atez/Bev from September 2020 to December 2021 at 22 institutions in Japan. Patients with viral infection was defined as those who were either serum anti-HCV- Ab or HBs-Ag-positive, while patients with non-viral infection was defined as those who were both serum anti-HCV Ab- and HBs-Ag-negative. We constructed a propensity-score-matched cohort to minimize the risk of observable potential confounders.

Results: Propensity score matching produced 126 matched pairs for patients with viral versus non-viral infection. After matching, the significant differences in baseline demographic features did not exist between the two groups. The objective response rate was 20.6% and 24.6% in viral- and non-viral-related HCC patients, respectively, without a significant difference (p = 0.55). The disease control rate was not also significantly different (68.3% vs 69.0%, p = 1.00). The median progression-free survival was 7.0 months (95% confidence interval [CI] 6.0-9.6) and 6.2 months (95% CI 5.1-7.8) in patients with viral and non-viral infection, and the 12-month survival rates were 65.5% (95% CI 50.8-76.8) and 71.7% (95% CI 57.3-81.9) in those with viral and non-viral infection, respectively, which were not significantly different (p = 0.33, p = 0.38). No significant difference in treatment-related adverse events was found between the two groups.

Conclusions: Our etiology-based study demonstrated that Atez/Bev showed good efficacy and safety for HCC patient with non-viral infection as well as those with viral infection.

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