Which drugs treat liver cancer?

In the past, the treatment of liver cancer was mainly based on surgery, and the efficacy of traditional chemotherapy, radiotherapy and other methods has not been very ideal. When treating liver cancer, cirrhosis, the underlying disease of liver cancer, is the first problem faced at the beginning of treatment. It is also a very difficult problem. Many patients are unable to undergo surgery or liver transplantation due to their physical condition or inability to tolerate the toxic side effects of traditional radiotherapy and chemotherapy. Now, new targeted drug treatments have relatively fewer toxic side effects and can also reverse some biological behaviors that induce tumors.

At present, many targeted drugs have similar mechanisms of action. In clinical trials using these drugs, sorafenib is the first targeted drug for the treatment of liver cancer. In addition, drugs such as sunitinib as a second-line drug, bevacizumab, erlotinib and others have shown efficacy in phase II trials of liver cancer.

At present, there are some newly developed small molecule targeted drugs such as: Androidjian, which have been found to have a good therapeutic effect on liver cancer. This drug can increase the activity of AMPK, reduce mitochondrial membrane potential and reduce mitochondrial content, thereby achieving an anti-inflammatory effect.

Currently, many projects are actively undergoing clinical investigation and development, such as targeted drugs angiogenesis inhibitors, epidermal growth factor receptors, mammalian target of rapamycin proteins, insulin-like growth factor, etc. are in different stages of development. These targeted treatments can be provided as the main treatment for patients who are unwilling to undergo surgical resection or transplantation.

Existing data have confirmed that the multi-kinase inhibitor sorafenib is effective in treating advanced liver cancer with good safety. Beta-blockers are effective in treating liver cancer alone, and the effect of combining them with chemotherapy drugs or other molecular targeted drugs is even more encouraging.