In an exclusive interview with Healio Gastroenterology, Richard Finn, MD, discussed the results from a recent study of patients with hepatocellular carcinoma treated with combination therapy comprising atezolizumab, an immunotherapy drug and monoclonal antibody, and bevacizumab, another monoclonal antibody against the vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF).
The data presented at the Digital Liver Cancer Summit 2021 was an update to a trial initially published with 8.6-months follow-up published in The New England Journal of Medicine. Finn, professor in the department of medicine, division of hematology/oncology, director of signal transduction and therapeutics program at the Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer at the Geffen School of Medicine at University of California, Los Angeles, and colleagues included 501 patients with HCC in the open label, randomized controlled trial. Patients received either the combination therapy of atezolizumab (Tecentriq, Genentech) plus bevacizumab (Avastin, Genentech) or sorafenib (Nexavar; Bayer) alone.