Lasty Friday, 28 February, Madrid hosted the kick-off meeting for the research project “ASPIRE-AECC: Improving the survival of liver cancer patients by combining immunotherapy and surgery” (link in Spanish), with 50 physicians and researchers attending. The project is funded by an eight million euro grant from the AECC as part of the ‘AECC 70% Survivorship Challenge’, which seeks to help to achieve its goal of exceeding a 70% survival rate for cancer by 2030.
The ASPIRE-AECC coordinators are Josep Maria Llovet, the head of the IDIBAPS research group Translational research in hepatic oncology, an ICREA professor and a professor of Medicine at the University of Barcelona and at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York; and Xosé R Bustelo, a research professor at the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) and the director of the Salamanca Cancer Research Centre (CSIC-University of Salamanca and Foundation for Cancer Research at the University of Salamanca).
The six-year project aims to conduct a randomised clinical trial to increase the survival window in patients with early-stage hepatocellular carcinoma who are at high risk of developing a new tumour after surgical removal. To achieve this, immunotherapy (atezolizumab plus bevacizumab) will be administered both before and after tumour surgery to promote a stronger anti-tumour immune response.
Markers that can predict responses to treatment will also be defined to move towards more personalised therapy and alternative therapies will be identified for patients who show resistance to treatment with immunotherapy.
The clinical trial will be conducted in 15 hospitals, whilst laboratory studies will be carried out in 10 basic-translational research centres. A total of 40 physicians and researchers from 25 centres located in 15 provinces will participate in the project: A Coruña, Badajoz, Barcelona, Bizkaia, Cantabria, Córdoba, Girona, Lleida, Málaga, Madrid, Navarre, Salamanca, Seville, Valencia and Zaragoza.
‘We are confident that the multifaceted nature of this consortium, together with the experience demonstrated by the different groups in conducting clinical trials and disruptive research, makes our overall goal feasible: the equitable improvement of overall survival in patients with hepatocellular carcinoma’, say the project coordinators.
