Clinical Trial: Study of Sunitinib in Patients With Advanced/Inoperable Fibrolamellar Carcinoma

Study Status: Terminated
Recruit Status: Terminated
Study Type: Interventional

Official Title: A Multicenter National Phase II Open Study Coupled With Translational Assessment of Biomarkers Predictive of Response to Sunitinib in Patients With Advanced/Inoperable Fibrolamel

Brief Summary:

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the antitumor activity of sunitinib in patients with advanced/inoperable fibrolamellar hepatocellular carcinoma.

Rationale: Sunitinib may stop the growth of tumor cells by blocking some of the enzymes needed for cell growth and by blocking blood flow to the tumor

Detailed Summary:

Fibrolamellar hepatocellular carcinoma is variant rare of hepatocellular carcinoma witch distinct clinical, histological and prognostic features from conventional hepatocellular carcinoma. This entity typically occurs in young adults with no underlying hepatitis or cirrhosis. Surgical resections could be proposed in some referral centers and this in cases of localized tumors. However, in cases of postoperative recurrence, "salvage" resection is not often possible. Overall prognosis remains poor, because of its primary chemoresistance and early recurrence of metastasis.

Sunitinib (SUTENT) is a potent tyrosine kinase inhibitor, with double antiangiogenic and antitumor activity, targeting multiple receptors as VEGF-R, PDGF-R, KIT and FLT3.

Since 2006, Sunitinib has been approved to treat advanced kidney cancer also called advanced renal cell carcinoma (a typically chemoresistant disease for which there no active treatment was available).

Several targets of sunitinib are overexpressed hepatocellular carcinoma lines as shown in the Literature review and pathological studies.

Otherwise, the overexpression of PDGFR and VEGFR correlates with recurrence and invasion in HCC. Finally, sunitinib showed an interesting antitumor activity in patients with conventional advanced HCC.

Thereby, it seems important to study how well the sunitinib, a potent antitumor and antiangiogenic agent, works in treating patients with advanced or inoperable fibrolamellar hepatocellular carcinoma especially, this setting lacks effective therapies. Furthermore, it seems urgent to conduct translational research and assessment to identify predictive biomarkers of response.

to evaluate the objective response according to RECIST Criteria 1.1