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Researchers at Mount Sinai have made a breakthrough in treating a type of liver cancer called hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). This research tested a combination of treatments that could help patients live longer without their cancer getting worse. Liver cancer is a serious and deadly cancer. In 2023, liver cancer was the fourth most common cause of death globally, accounting for more than 800,000 deaths annually. Hepatocellular carcinoma represents approximately 90% of primary liver cancers. This cancer is most commonly found in people living with chronic viral hepatitis, heavy alcohol use, or metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease. This landmark trial demonstrates...

In a phase 2 clinical trial of the immune checkpoint inhibitor pembrolizumab, investigators found that 42 percent of patients with metastatic brain cancer benefited from the therapy, with seven patients in the trial surviving longer than two years. "There are very few effective treatments for patients with brain metastases. Our overarching objective is to find improved therapies for this patient population," said Priscilla K. Brastianos, MD. "With this trial, we investigated pembrolizumab, which is an immunotherapy for patients with brain metastases. We showed that pembrolizumab was tolerated and showed clinical benefit in the brain in 42 percent of patients, which...

Patients with high-risk stage III-IV melanoma who received pembrolizumab after their surgery reported a better quality of life than patients who received the previous standard-of-care treatment with either ipilimumab or high-dose interferon. Researchers on the trial had recently reported the primary clinical results which showed that patients on the study's pembrolizumab arm had a longer time before their disease recurred than patients on either of the other two treatments. The new quality-of-life findings come from a planned analysis of patient-reported outcomes (PROs) collected during the trial. The primary endpoint for the quality-of-life analysis was the Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy—Biologic...