Hepatocellular Carcinoma: Reasons for Phase III Failure and Novel Perspectives on Trial Design

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is a major health problem. Most patients with HCC experience a recurrence after resection/ablation or are diagnosed at advanced stages. Sorafenib remains the only approved systemic drug for these patients. Molecular therapies targeting signaling cascades involved in hepatocarcinogenesis have been explored in phase III clinical trials. However, none of the drugs tested have shown positive results in the first-line (brivanib, sunitinib, erlotinib, and linifanib) or second-line (brivanib, everolimus) setting after sorafenib progression. Reasons for failure are heterogeneous and include lack of understanding of critical drivers of tumor progression/dissemination, liver toxicity, flaws in trial design, or marginal antitumoral potency. These trials are also challenging time to progression as a surrogate endpoint of survival. Trials ongoing testing drugs head-to-head versus sorafenib in "all comers" might have difficulties in achieving superior results in the first line. Novel trials are also designed testing drugs in biomarker-based subpopulations of patients with HCC. Most common mutations, however, are undruggable, such as p53 and CTNNB1. Two types of studies are proposed: (i) phase II pivotal proof-of-concept studies testing drugs blocking potential oncogenic addiction loops, such as the one testing MEK inhibitors in RAS(+) patients or amplification of FGF19 as a target; and (ii) phase II to III studies using biomarker-based trial enrichment for defining HCC subpopulations, such as the case of enriching for MET-positive tumors. These strategies have been deemed successful in breast, melanoma, and lung cancers, and are expected to change the landscape of trial design of HCC.