According to a study from researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, liver cancer's rapid development causes a vulnerability in its energy-production and cell-building processes that may be effectively exploited using a new combination-treatment technique. Researchers found in August that the most common form of primary liver cancer, hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), alters its metabolism in a way that makes it vulnerable to interruptions in the availability of a crucial chemical, arginine. They discovered that regardless of the particular genetic changes giving rise to each HCC tumor, this arginine susceptibility was present in every single one of them.

In preclinical experiments, the researchers demonstrated that depriving HCC tumors of arginine and blocking the survival-promoting response that results causes HCC tumors to enter a non-growing, or "senescent," state. In this state, the tumors are susceptible to being eliminated by a new class of drugs that target senescent cells.

Celeste Simon, PhD, the Arthur H. Rubenstein, MBBCh Professor in the Department of Cell and Developmental Biology and Scientific Director of the Abramson Family Cancer Research Institute at Penn Medicine, was the study's senior author and recognized that she and her team had essentially “…identified a metabolic property of most liver cancers that offers the possibility of treating these cancers effectively, using drugs that are already approved or in development”.

The most common kind of liver cancer in adults is HCC. It is responsible for about 80% of primary liver tumors, or cancers that begin in the liver rather than spread there from other organs, according to the National Cancer Institute. Nearly a million cases of HCC have been reported worldwide, and roughly 29,000 Americans are diagnosed with it each year. Alcoholism, obesity, and chronic liver inflammation are known to be the main causes of HCC. Because the disease is typically detected only after it has progressed past the point where surgical removal is still an option, it is rarely treated. Furthermore, people with severe HCC frequently may not have access to liver transplants, which can treat benign illness. There are few drug therapies for HCC, and they practically never cure the disease. New therapy methods are thus desperately needed.

Read more about the specifics of this groundbreaking research on Penn Medicine News.