Thyroid dysfunction could predict favorable outcomes in HCC after Ate/Bev therapy.

What is it about?

Atezolizumab and bevacizumab (Ate/Bev) combination has become the new first-line systemic therapy for unresectable hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Although several studies reported thyroid dysfunction after treatment with immune checkpoint inhibitors, the clinical and immunological significance of thyroid dysfunction in patients treated with Ate/Bev has not been comprehensively addressed. This study comprehensively evaluated the clinical and immunological implications of thyroid dysfunction in unresectable HCC patients treated with Ate/Bev.

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Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash

Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash

Why is it important?

In this study, we found that thyroid adverse events (AEs) occurred in 19.7% of patients (17.3% with hypothyroidism and 5.8% with thyrotoxicosis) after Ate/Bev treatment, with a median follow-up of 11.0 months. Patients with thyroid AEs exhibited favorable clinical outcomes with Ate/Bev treatment compared with those without thyroid AEs. Moreover, patients with thyroid AEs demonstrated significantly better clinical outcomes in terms of PFS, OS, and ORR than those without thyroid AEs. We also externally validated favorable survival outcomes in patients with thyroid AEs in a cohort of IMbrave150 patients treated with Ate/Bev. Our study has the strength of being the first to report the correlation between thyroid AEs and favorable clinical outcomes of Ate/Bev using multicenter cohorts and IMbrave150 study.

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