Researchers at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York have found that sorafenib (Nexavar) helps patients with advanced liver cancer live about 44 percent longer compared with patients who did not receive the anti-cancer drug.

Cancer is a disease characterised by important metabolic alterations. Not only these adaptative changes give higher proliferative capacity to cancer cells, but they also contribute to higher resistance to chemotherapeutic agents.

International research involving the University Hospital of the University of Navarra, together with other hospitals in Spain, has shown that Sorafenib, an orally administered pharmaceutical medicine, results in patients with primary hepatocarcinomas (liver tumours) to live 40% more on average compared to those not taking the drug.

A new large, prospective population-based study confirms an inverse relationship between coffee consumption and liver cancer risk. The study also found that higher levels of gamma-glutamyltransferase (GGT) in the blood were associated with an increased risk of developing the disease.

Scientists at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) have taken the search for cancer-causing genes an important step forward. In a newly published paper, they confirm that a gene called DLC1 is a tumor suppressor.

Patients who have chronic hepatitis C with advanced fibrosis have twice the risk of developing liver cancer if they also have diabetes. These findings are published in the June issue of Hepatology, a journal published by John Wiley & Sons on behalf of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases (AASLD). The article is also available online at Wiley Interscience.

By combining the use of stents and photodynamic therapy, also called SpyGlass, physicians at the University of Virginia have been able to significantly increase survival rates for patients suffering from advanced cholangiocarcinoma, cancer of the liver bile duct.

Treatment with sunitinib slows tumor growth and reduces the risk of metastasis in patients with hepatocellular carcinoma, an aggressive cancer of the liver, researchers report.

Liver hepatocarcinoma is a highly vascularized cancer, and more and more research is focused on the molecules controlling angiogenesis. In 2001, two novel peptides, known as prokineticin 1/EG-VEGF (PK1/EG-VEGF) and prokineticin 2/Bv8 (PK2/Bv8), were identified, as having potent angiogenic activities.

Many scientists believe up to 40 percent of liver cancer is caused by stem cells gone wild – master cells in the organ that have lost all growth control. But, despite years spent looking, no one has ever found these liver “cancer stem cells” – or even normal stem cells in the organ. Until now.

Tiny molecules that help cells regulate which proteins they make might one day help doctors predict which liver cancer patients are likely to live longer than others, new research suggests.

Liver cancer is the fifth most common cancer in the world with a poor prognosis. About three quarters of the cases of liver cancer are found in Southeast Asia, including China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea, India, and Japan. The frequency of liver cancer in Southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa is greater than 20 cases per 100,000 population.