Enlighting the Shadow for Advanced Hepatocellular Carcinoma: Immunotherapy with Immune Checkpoint Inhibitors

Hepatocellular carcinoma has still been one of the cancer with increasing incidence and highest mortality rate in the world. Although many new promising developments have been defined in hepatocarcinogenesis, with a short survival the treatment of patients with advanced hepatocellular carcinoma is an emerging issue. On the recent decade, only one anti-angiogenic agent sorafenib improved overall survival with costing a hardly manageable toxicity. Novel immunotherapeutic agents, especially immune checkpoint inhibitors are on the edge of more effective but less toxic treatments for these patients. In this article the activity of immune checkpoint inhibitors, anti-CTLA-4 and anti-PD1 antibodies for the treatment of patients with advanced hepatocellular cancer will be reviewed.