National Cancer Center; National Clinical Research Center for Cancer; Department of Hepatobiliary
Surgery, Cancer Hospital of Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and Peking Union Medical College
Surgical resection remains the best approach for achieving long-term survival in patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC); however, due to the low early diagnosis rate of HCC patients in China, only 15%-20% of the patients are eligible for surgical resection at the time of initial diagnosis. Even for the patients undergoing surgery, the 5-year recurrence rate after surgery is as high as 50%-70%, resulting in an unsatisfactory prognosis. In recent years, the advances in systemic therapies, especially targeted therapy combined with immunotherapy, have not only extended the survival of patients with advanced liver cancer, but also promoted the application of systemic therapy in the earlier stages of HCC. On the one hand, the progress in systemic therapy has made conversion therapy a possible option for HCC, allowing a substantial number of patients with unresectable HCC at initial diagnosis to get the opportunity for surgical resection after downstaging and achieve a survival rate similar to those with resectable early-stage HCC at initial diagnosis; on the other hand, effective systemic therapy is being applied as neoadjuvant and adjuvant therapies for patients with resectable HCC, aiming to increase the R0 resection rate, reduce postoperative recurrence, and improve overall survival. Meanwhile, it should be clearly noted that although the advances in systemic therapy have significantly altered conventional surgical treatment paradigms, most clinical studies on conversion therapy, neoadjuvant therapy, and adjuvant therapy are small-scale phase II trials, with limited high-grade evidence from evidence-based medicine. It is important to select a reasonable therapeutic goal and develop an individualized treatment regimen based on the characteristics of tumor, and further explorations are needed to search for new biomarkers for predicting the efficacy of conversion therapy and perioperative treatment and identify the population with true benefits.
Due to the insidious onset and poor prognosis of primary liver cancer, most patients are found to have unresectable primary liver cancer at initial diagnosis. In recent years, with the advent of targeted therapy, immunotherapy, and local therapy, some patients with advanced liver cancer have achieved successful conversion and undergone radical surgical resection, but at the same time, such treatment has brought many issues, such as the identification of potential population for conversion, the selection of conversion regimen, the necessity and timing of surgical resection after conversion, and the necessity and duration of adjuvant therapy after conversion surgery. This article discusses the above problems in conversion therapy for liver cancer based on the author’s own experience.
Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is one of the most common malignant tumors in clinical practice. Due to the lack of typical clinical manifestations in the early stage, most patients in China are in the advanced stage at the time of confirmed diagnosis and thus lose the opportunity for surgical resection, which leads to a poor prognosis. Therefore, it is necessary to explore related therapies for converting unresectable HCC into resectable HCC. In recent years, the improvement in local therapy such as transarterial interventional therapies and radiation therapy technology, together with the clinical application of new targeted therapies and immune checkpoint inhibitors, has brought new opportunities and challenges in the conversion therapy for advanced HCC, and local therapy combined with systemic therapy may have a good synergistic effect, improve the conversion rate of surgery. This article investigates the value of local therapy combined with systemic therapy in the conversion therapy for HCC, in order to provide a basis for the clinical treatment of unresectable HCC.
With the continuous emergence of biotherapy drugs in recent years, great progress has been made in the systemic therapy for advanced liver cancer. Immune checkpoint inhibitors combined with anti-angiogenic targeted drugs has become the first-line regimen recommended for the treatment of advanced liver cancer and has achieved clear oncology benefits and survival benefits. The regimens for immunotherapy combined with local treatment continue to emerge and have clearly improved objective response rate, and targeted and immune therapeutic regimens combined with sequential surgical treatment are reshaping the treatment pattern of advanced liver cancer and have finally improved radical surgical resection rate and long-term survival rate. Such changes in treatment guided by immunotherapy with or without targeted therapy have brought great challenges and thus require meticulous thoughts. With exploration of immune and targeted therapies combined with sequential surgical regimen as an example, there is a series of new problems and challenges before they are widely applied in routine diagnosis and treatment, including the selection of drug combination regimens, the evaluation of therapeutic efficacy, the treatment of toxic and side effects, surgical standards and timing, postoperative adjuvant treatment regimens, the validation of long-term survival benefits, and the selection of second-line treatment regimens for primary and secondary drug resistance. This article puts forward some suggestions and thoughts for several key aspects.
Chronic hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection is the major cause of chronic hepatitis B (CHB), liver cirrhosis, and primary hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and brings huge health and economic burdens to the society. The disease progression of CHB is driven by the interaction between the virus, host immune response, and infected hepatocytes. Staging of the natural history of chronic HBV infection will help to understand disease progression, assess the stage of disease progression, and provide guidance for determining the time and regimen of antiviral therapy. Due to the controversy over the existence of a true immune tolerance phase, Guidelines for the prevention and treatment of chronic hepatitis B (2022 edition) in China weakens the association between disease state and host immune status and provides an updated description of the natural history of chronic HBV infection based on the four disease stages from the 2017 European Association for the Study of the Liver (EASL) guidelines, i.e., HBeAg-positive chronic HBV infection, HBeAg-positive CHB, HBeAg-negative chronic HBV infection, and HBeAg-negative CHB. Moreover, it fails to fully resolve the issue of the “indeterminate phase”. With the growing trend of expanding antiviral treatment strategies in clinical practice, the current staging system based on natural history can hardly meet clinical needs, and thus it is necessary to make updates. This article elaborates on the discovery of the natural history of chronic HBV infection, the problems of the existing staging system of natural history, and related recommendations, in order to simplify the staging system of natural history, align with current antiviral treatment regimens, and facilitate clinical decision-making by clinicians.
Inflammatory liver injury is the initiating factor for various chronic liver diseases. It can involve the whole body, and on the contrary, systemic diseases may also lead to liver injury. The diagnosis and treatment of liver disease should not only consider the liver disease itself, but also understand the interaction between various systemic diseases and inflammatory liver injury and related pathophysiological mechanisms. Therefore, the diagnosis and treatment of liver injury often require multidisciplinary discussions and joint decision-making. One of the important links in the treatment of liver disease is to protect and maintain the stability of liver function, and how to carry out anti-inflammatory and liver-protecting treatment should be considered during the development of treatment strategies. Bicyclol is a chemical agent independently developed by China and is used for the treatment of inflammatory liver injury. Bicyclol has a good clinical effect in the prevention and treatment of inflammatory liver injury due to various causes and has been registered and listed in nine countries along the Belt and Road. Therefore, we have organized domestic experts from relevant disciplines all over the country to summarize the advances in the multidisciplinary clinical application of bicyclol in the prevention and treatment of inflammatory liver injury based on related guidelines/consensus statements/clinical pathways and evidence-based medicine and with reference to the clinical practice in China, in order to improve the scientific and standard use of bicyclol in clinical practice and the prevention and treatment of inflammatory liver injury in each discipline.
Primary biliary cholangitis (PBC) is a chronic autoimmune liver disease. In recent years, related studies in China and globally have provided some evidence-based medical evidence for the integrated traditional Chinese and Western medicine treatment of PBC. Based on the latest diagnosis and treatment experience and guidelines in China and globally, Expert Committee on Hepatology, Doctor Society of Integrative Medicine, Chinese Medical Doctor Association, organized related experts in China to formulate this consensus, in order to provide guidance and reference for clinicians in the diagnosis, TCM syndrome differentiation, and integrated traditional Chinese and Western medicine treatment of PBC.
With further in-depth studies on non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), new evidence, concepts, and methods continue to emerge. Chinese Society of Hepatology, Chinese Medical Association, comprehensively updated and revised the previous guidelines based on the latest research advances in fatty liver disease in China and globally and released Clinical practice guideline of prevention and treatment of metabolic dysfunction-associated (non-alcoholic) fatty liver disease (2024 edition). This article introduces the updates in the new edition of the guideline from the aspects of related terms (metabolic associated fatty liver disease [MAFLD]), clinical typing and staging, diagnostic criteria, and natural history. The guideline particularly emphasizes the importance of screening, assessment, and noninvasive diagnosis of progressive liver fibrosis in disease management and proposes active multidisciplinary collaboration in the management of MAFLD. With the implementation and application of the new edition of the guideline, the standardization of screening, diagnosis, treatment and follow-up of MAFLD patients in China will be further improved to improve the prognosis of the majority of patients.
Multiple primary cancers (MPC) refer to the presence of more than one type of cancer with different histological features and sites in the same individual, and it is relatively rare in clinical practice. This article reports a case of decompensated cirrhosis with MPC and discusses the diagnosis, treatment, and clinical implications of this patient with decompensated cirrhosis and MPC.
Liver fibrosis and cirrhosis are the common outcomes of various chronic liver diseases after progression, and studies have shown that liver fibrosis and early liver cirrhosis can be reversed. Compound traditional Chinese medicine prescriptions have a marked therapeutic effect in reversing liver fibrosis and early liver cirrhosis, and their mechanism of action remains unclear. By reviewing related articles in China and globally, this article summarizes the six main phenotypic mechanisms involved in the efficacy of compound traditional Chinese medicine prescriptions, i.e., inhibiting liver inflammation and regulating liver immune response, regulating hepatic stellate cell activation and extracellular matrix (ECM) generation, promoting ECM degradation, reversing hepatic sinusoidal capillarization, regulating hepatocyte regeneration, and regulating gut microbiota, and in addition, this article also analyzes the advances and shortcomings in current studies on each phenotype. Future studies on compound traditional Chinese medicine prescriptions should focus on experimental exploration and rescue experiments to verify the above phenotypes and further explore the upstream and downstream signaling pathways with a marked effect. This article aims to help clarify the direction and ideas of studies on the therapeutic mechanism of compound traditional Chinese medicine prescriptions, in order to provide a basis for clarifying the scientific essence of compound traditional Chinese medicine prescriptions.
Liver cancer is one of the most threatening diseases to the human body, and most patients are already in the advanced stage at the time of diagnosis, resulting in an extremely high mortality rate. The diagnosis and treatment of early-stage liver cancer is the key to improving the prognosis of patients. Medical imaging is an important method that assists in the diagnosis of liver cancer, and currently, intelligent image recognition technology based on medical imaging data has been widely applied in the field of medical diagnosis and has good application prospects. This article reviews the current status of research on artificial intelligence (AI) methods for the diagnosis of focal liver lesions based on liver medical images and proposes the advantages and shortcomings of current AI diagnosis, so as to provide new research ideas for the intelligent diagnosis of liver cancer in the future.
In recent years, there has been a deeper understanding of the role and mechanisms of common inflammatory cytokines in the development and progression of liver cirrhosis, such as interleukin-1β, interleukin-6, interleukin-10, interleukin-17, tumor necrosis factor-α, interferon-γ, and C-reactive protein, and significant achievements have also been made in the research on the association of these inflammatory cytokines with disorder of glucose metabolism and pancreatic islet dysfunction. This article reviews the role of inflammatory cytokines in patients with liver cirrhosis and their impact on disorder of glucose metabolism and pancreatic islet dysfunction, in order to provide a theoretical basis for clarifying the pathogenesis of hepatogenous diabetes and performing the clinical management of the disease.
Acute-on-chronic liver failure (ACLF) is a complex clinical syndrome of acute liver function deterioration on the basis of chronic liver diseases, characterized by hepatic and/or extra-hepatic organ failure and a high short-term mortality rate. At present, there is still a lack of effective treatment methods, and the mortality rate of ACLF reaches 50% — 90% after comprehensive medical treatment. A simple, rapid, and accurate prognostic prediction model for ACLF can help clinicians accurately judge the prognosis of ACLF patients in the early stage, identify the patients with poor prognosis, and provide early interventions, which can improve patient prognosis to some extent and help to reduce mortality rates. With the continuous development of computer science and increasingly powerful data processing capabilities, artificial intelligence is gaining more attention and has been applied in various aspects of liver diseases including diagnosis, treatment, and prognostic prediction. With reference to the current status of research in China and globally, this article reviews the common prognostic models for ACLF and machine learning-based prognostic prediction models and summarizes the latest research advances, in order to provide new perspectives for the future development of prognostic prediction models for ACLF.
Exosomes are an important vehicle for mediating material transportation and information transmission between cells, and the exosomes derived from hepatocytes, liver stem cells or extrahepatic mesenchymal stem cells promote the recovery and regeneration of damaged hepatocytes by inhibiting immune inflammatory response, antagonizing against oxidative stress and apoptosis, and inducing autophagy, thereby exerting a protective effect against liver failure. This article reviews the molecular mechanism of exosomes in regulating the pathogenesis of liver failure and its effect on the development, progression, and prognosis of liver failure, in order to assess the potential value of exosomes as a diagnostic marker and a therapeutic target.
Liver regeneration plays a crucial role in the recovery after liver injury induced by N-acetyl-p-aminophenol (APAP). After APAP overdose, the degree of regeneration increases with the extent of liver injury, leading to the resolution of liver injury and spontaneous recovery in most cases. However, severe APAP overdose can impair liver regeneration and result in uncontrolled liver injury, even failure to recover or death in severe cases. Following APAP-induced liver injury, interactions between cells in the liver are essential for regenerative response. Liver regeneration is jointly regulated by multiple proliferative signaling pathways, involving various kinases, nuclear receptors, transcription factors, and coactivators. Severe APAP overdose can inhibit the activation of proliferative signaling pathways, thereby causing cell cycle arrest and impairing liver regeneration. Although liver regeneration plays a critical role in the repair of APAP-induced liver injury, the underlying mechanisms remain unclear. This article reviews the research advances in the role of liver regeneration in APAP-induced liver injury, in order to provide a reference for further basic research in this area.
Since the proposal of the concept of the gut-liver axis, a large number of studies have focused on exploring the connection between gut microbiota and liver disease; however, the idea of using pyroptosis as a hub to explore the intrinsic mechanism of gut-liver crosstalk is still in its infancy. This article mainly describes the process by which gut microbiota dysbiosis affects the integrity of mucosal barrier and bile acid metabolism, induces pyroptosis, and thereby affects the development and progression of liver diseases, and it also concludes that gut microbiota dysbiosis affects liver diseases by inducing NLRP3/AIM2/Caspase-1-dependent, Caspase-4/11/GSDMD-dependent, and Caspase-3/GSDME-dependent pyroptosis. In summary, this study aims to provide new ideas and targets for the future diagnosis and treatment of liver diseases by establishing the connection between pyroptosis and intestinal-liver immune crosstalk.
Autophagy is a highly conserved cellular degradation pathway that degrades lipid droplets through a process called “lipophagy”. Lipophagy can selectively recognize lipid substances and degrade them, promoting β oxidation and thereby maintaining the balance of intracellular lipid metabolism. The liver regulates lipid droplet metabolism through lipophagy signaling pathways or key molecules, thereby alleviating hepatic steatosis and improving nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). This article reviews the latest advances in the degradation of hepatic lipid droplets through the three autophagic pathways of macroautophagy, molecular chaperone-mediated autophagy, and microautophagy. The major signaling pathways of AMPK/mTOR-ULK1, ATGL-SIRT1, FGF21-JMJD3, and Akt are involved in the regulation of the lipophagy process and help to maintain the homeostasis of lipid metabolism in the liver, so as to provide new ideas for clinical prevention and treatment of NAFLD.
Primary biliary cholangitis (PBC) is a persistent inflammatory autoimmune liver disease characterized by inflammatory injury and cholestasis in the small intrahepatic bile ducts. At present, the exact pathogenesis of PBC remains unknown, but a consensus has been reached on the fact that PBC is the result of the synergistic effect of various factors. In the cascade of immune and inflammatory reactions associated with PBC, macrophages appear as essential immune cells and actively participate in the damage to bile duct epithelial cells. This article introduces the origin and heterogeneity of macrophages in PBC and reviews the potential role of macrophages in the pathogenesis of PBC.
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- 1Current situation in the research of Gilbert’s syndrome
- 2Review of acute pancreatitis scoring systems
- 3Clinical value of 13C-methacetin breath test for assessing liver function in patients with cirrhosis
- 4Studies on relevant gactors of Child-Pugh grading in hepatic cirrhosis
- 5Meta-analysis of 111 patients with nonalcoholic steatohepatitis-associated hepatocellular carcinoma
- 6Research state and prospect of hyponatremia in cirrhosis
- 7Relationship between Epstein-Barr virus infection and hepatic lesions in children
- 8Congenital bile acid synthesis defect and cholestatic liver disease
- 9Interventional treatment for Budd-Chiari syndrome:reports of 883 cases
- 10
- 1The guideline of prevention and treatment for chronic hepatitis B: a 2015 update
- 2Chinese guidelines for the management of acute pancreatitis ( Shenyang , 2019 )
- 3The guideline of prevention and treatment for chronic hepatitis B(2010 version)
- 4Comprehensive guidelines for the diagnosis and treatment of pancreatic cancer (2018 version)
- 5Consensus on the diagnosis and management of primary biliary cirrhosis (cholangitis)(2015)
- 6Diagnosis, management, and treatment of hepatocellular carcinoma (V2017)
- 7Consensus on the diagnosis and management of autoimmune hepatitis(2015)
- 8Current situation in the research of Gilbert’s syndrome
- 9Guidelines for the prevention and treatment of chronic hepatitis B (version 2019)
- 10
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