One of the most common types of liver cancer is the hepatocellular carcinoma; it has a low survival rate. The drugs available to treat the disease can only last for three months. A combination of chemotherapy and immunotherapy can extend the patient's survival rate and prevent the growth of the tumor.
Often, the hepatocellular carcinoma is very hard to diagnose. When detected, it may be too late for surgery to be an option because tumors already spread in the liver. This can start on either small tumors that surround the liver or just a single tumor.
In a recent published study, chemotherapy and immunotherapy methods were used in mice with tumor. The result shows a slow growth of tumor. The slowdown of the production became significant than either using chemotherapy or immunotherapy alone.
Chemotherapy is the most common treatment for cancer patients. Immunotherapy, on the other hand, is recognized because of its effectivity when fighting certain disease. It stimulates the immune system or gives the immune system a component in fighting the disease. With the combination of these two, it allows the body to stop spreading the cancer cells throughout the body.
In the official result of the study, the use of immunotherapy alone made the tumor of mice grew slower; size is only 15 times larger. While in chemotherapy, the size of the tumor is 25 times larger. When they used both immunotherapy and chemotherapy, the tumor only grew 11 times larger. The result only shows that combination of chemotherapy and immunotherapy slows down the growth of tumor in the liver than using them individually.
Even though the procedures could not really cure liver cancer, it is still significant because of the slowdown in tumor growth.