Abstract No. 545 Transcatheter Intraarterial Delivery of Combination Therapy for Hepatocellular Carcinoma

The purpose of our study was to test the following hypotheses in a rat model with liver tumors: (1) Compared with sorafenib only group, natural killer (NK) cell only group and control group, the combined treatment group can effectively slow down the tumor growth rate. (2) The growth rates of tumor blood vessels in the four different treatment groups vary greatly, which means that the combined treatment group not only reduces the growth rate of the tumors but also inhibits the function of the tumors. In this study, we randomly divided 24 rat HCC models (N1S1 liver tumors implanted into Sprague-Dawley rats) into 4 groups: transcatheter IHA NK infusion combination group, oral sorafenib group, IHA NK infusion group and transcatheter saline infusion control group. For rats in the transcatheter IHA NK infusion combination group and IHA NK infusion group, we anesthetized the rats and performed a small laparotomy. Heparin, 4.0 × 106 preconditioned NK cells (PNK), and PBS have been delivered from the IHA to the liver lobes. For the transcatheter IHA saline infusion control group, PBS was infused, which was equivalent to the volume of the IHA group, and the rest of procedure was performed as same as the IHA group. T2w and DCE studies were performed one week after implantation and one week after drug treatment. Finally, the MRI data were analyzed to evaluate the efficacy of different groups. According to the changes in tumor size in T2w images, after one week of treatment, the transcatheter IHA NK infusion combination group was significantly better than the other three groups in inhibiting tumor growth. Although the IHA NK infusion group and oral sorafenib group were not as good as the transcatheter IHA NK infusion combination group, they showed significant inhibition of tumor growth compared with the transcatheter IHA saline infusion control group. At the same time, we can observe on the DCE images that the maximum enhancement (ME) value of the transcatheter IHA NK infusion combination group was significantly lower than that of the other groups. This shows that the IHA NK infusion combination group significantly inhibited the formation of new blood vessels in tumors and reduced tumor function. This study demonstrates that the combination of sorafenib and NK cells is a promising approach for the treatment of advanced HCC. Not only can it effectively slow down the growth of tumors, but it also significantly inhibits the formation of blood vessels within tumors. And the combination of the two can also effectively reduce the side effects of high concentrations of sorafenib and NK cells.