Au KP, Chok KSH. Mammalian target of rapamycin inhibitors after post-transplant hepatocellular carcinoma recurrence: Is it too late? World J Gastrointest Surg 2020; 12(4): 149-158 [PMID: 32426094 DOI: 10.4240/wjgs.v12.i4.149]
Corresponding Author of This Article
Kenneth Siu Ho Chok, FACS, FRCS (Ed), MBBS, Associate Professor, Department of Surgery and State Key Laboratory for Liver Research, The University of Hong Kong, 102 Pok Fu Lam Road, Hong Kong 999077, China. chok6275@hku.hk
Research Domain of This Article
Surgery
Article-Type of This Article
Retrospective Cohort Study
Open-Access Policy of This Article
This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
World J Gastrointest Surg. Apr 27, 2020; 12(4): 149-158 Published online Apr 27, 2020. doi: 10.4240/wjgs.v12.i4.149
Mammalian target of rapamycin inhibitors after post-transplant hepatocellular carcinoma recurrence: Is it too late?
Kin Pan Au, Kenneth Siu Ho Chok
Kin Pan Au, Department of Surgery, Queen Mary Hospital, Hong Kong 999077, China
Kenneth Siu Ho Chok, Department of Surgery and State Key Laboratory for Liver Research, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong 999077, China
Author contributions: Chok KSH proposed the study; Au KP and Chok KSH conducted the study and wrote the manuscript.
Institutional review board statement: Institutional review board approval was not required for this study as it was a retrospective analysis of data and thus treatments given to patients were not affected by the study.
Informed consent statement: No informed consent forms were required as this was a retrospective cohort study.
Conflict-of-interest statement: None of the authors has any conflict of interest.
Data sharing statement: No additional data are available.
STROBE statement: The guidelines of the STROBE Statement have been adopted.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Kenneth Siu Ho Chok, FACS, FRCS (Ed), MBBS, Associate Professor, Department of Surgery and State Key Laboratory for Liver Research, The University of Hong Kong, 102 Pok Fu Lam Road, Hong Kong 999077, China. chok6275@hku.hk
Received: December 30, 2019 Peer-review started: December 30, 2019 First decision: January 28, 2020 Revised: March 21, 2020 Accepted: March 26, 2020 Article in press: March 26, 2020 Published online: April 27, 2020 Processing time: 114 Days and 22.1 Hours
Core Tip
Core tip: Mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) inhibitors have been shown to reduce the risk of tumour recurrence after liver transplantation for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). However, their role in established post-transplant HCC recurrence is uncertain. A retrospective study of 143 patients who developed HCC recurrence after liver transplantation was performed. Seventy-nine (55%) patients received an mTOR inhibitor-based immunosuppressive regime, while 64 (45%) patients did not. The median post-recurrence survival was 21.0 ± 4.1 mo in the mTOR inhibitor group and 11.2 ± 2.5 mo in the control group. Multivariate Cox regression analysis confirmed that mTOR inhibitor therapy was independently associated with improved post-recurrence survival (P = 0.04, OR = 0.482, 95%CI: 0.241-0.966).
