A Prospective Study of Radiofrequency Ablation Combined With Systematic Neoadjuvant Therapy in the Treatment of Recurrent Hepatocellular Carcinoma

RFA is an important minimally invasive approach for recurrent HCC treatment, but is hampered by the high recurrence rate and limited ablation volume for the tumor. Therefore, the key to improving the efficacy of RFA is to maximize the complete ablation zone of tumor lesions and the killing of residual cancer cells. In recent years, due to the unique advantages of immune checkpoint inhibitors(ICIs), immunotherapy has gradually become a vital part of neoadjuvant therapy, and the scope of immunotherapy in malignant tumors expands. With administration of ICIs, revived tumor-specific CD8+ T cells proliferate and kill existing tumor cells and recirculate into the blood. After resection or ablation of the primary tumor, the remaining circulating tumor-specific CD8+ T cells and T cell clones present in the metastatic site can retain long-term anti-tumor immunity and play a vital role in continuous killing of residual cancer cells and immune surveillance. At present, the combination of targeted therapy and immune checkpoint inhibitors has achieved a higher objective response rate (ORR) and disease control rate (DCR) in the treatment of in treatment of HCC, which provides a reliable theoretical and practical basis for using as a strategy of neoadjuvant therapy.

The current reports on neoadjuvant therapy for HCC are limited to patients who are going undergo surgical resection, and there is no report on the neoadjuvant therapy prior to RFA. Since molecular targeted drugs generally have anti-angiogenic effects, drug withdrawal for two weeks or more (bevacizumab should be stopped for at least 4 weeks) before surgery is required to reduce the risk of intraoperative bleeding caused by targeted drugs and the hard-to-heal incision after operation. The longer-term drug withdrawal will prolong the preoperative waiting period, and the tumor may progress, leaving the patients loss of the opportunity for surgery. However, due to its advantage of minimal invasiveness, patients can undergo RFA directly without drug withdrawal.