Primary Liver Cancer

Celsion’s lead indication is in Primary Liver Cancer

Primary liver cancer, also known as hepatocellular carcinoma, or HCC, is one of the most common and deadly forms of cancer. It is estimated that up to 90% of liver cancer patients will die within five years of diagnosis. The incidence of primary liver cancer today is approximately 26,000 new cases per year in the United States, approximately 40,000 cases per year in Europe, and is rapidly growing worldwide at approximately 750,000 cases per year, due to the high prevalence of Hepatitis B and C in developing countries. Over 50% of these new cases will be in China. The World Health Organization estimates that primary liver cancer may become the number one cancer worldwide, surpassing lung cancer, by 2020. With the inclusion of liver metastases of different origin (e.g. colon, lung, breast etc.), total cases of liver cancer, particularly in the west, increases significantly.

Although the most effective treatment for liver cancer is surgical resection of the tumor, 80% to 90% of patients are ineligible for surgery due to the progression of their tumors. Early stage liver cancer generally has few symptoms, so detection and diagnosis are often delayed. Radio frequency ablation (RFA) has increasingly become the standard of care for non-resectable liver tumors, but the treatment becomes less effective with larger tumors.

Clinical trials with ThermoDox® for the treatment of HCC are currently underway using radio frequency ablation (RFA) as a heat source to both ablate the tumor and activate ThermoDox as a means of affecting the area surrounding the tumor, where later recurrence most often takes place.