Treatment to reduce liver cancer tumours is world’s first, Hong Kong researchers claim

A 65-year-old local man suffering from stage 4 liver cancer was cured after receiving a new "reduce and remove" treatment proposed by clinical professors at the University of Hong Kong.

Wong Lok-wing received that diagnosis last November after an 18.2-centimeter-long tumor was found over his left liver, with the cancer having already spread to nearby veins. He also has severe cirrhosis and has to go to hospital frequently due to the abdominal distension that it caused.

Wong and his son, Nathan Wong Ho-ting, who donated part of his liver to his father, shared their experience at HKU yesterday.

"We went to see many doctors and none said there was a way to cure my father," Nathan Wong said, adding he was already thinking about how to make his dad more comfortable in the last six months of his life at that time.

Liver cancer ranks as the fifth most common cancer in Hong Kong in 2021 with over 1,700 new cases, according to the Hong Kong Cancer Registry.

However, only 30 percent of liver cancer patients are amenable to currently available treatment options - to resect the liver tumor by operation, said Albert Chan Chi-yan, clinical professor at the department of surgery.

"Patients who are diagnosed with advanced liver cancer or have a poor-functioning liver cannot accept resection operations, as the risk is too high," Chan said.

But Wong was cured after receiving the "reduce and remove" treatment, which first reduced his tumor to an operable size and then resolved tumor thrombus issues in the veins over a period of six months.

He then received a liver transplantation in August. He was discharged with a 1.5-cm-long tumor, an early stage one tumor and has remained cancer-free so far.

This marks the first reported case worldwide to cure advanced-stage liver cancer by reducing the tumor to an early stage one and removing it by liver transplantation, Chan said.

"There is no other effective way in the world so far to shrink a stage 4 liver tumor to an operable size," he said, " and this new treatment effectively prolongs the lives of patients whose tumor stage and size must be reduced before liver transplantation."

He added that the new treatment could also help save the elderly from liver cancer, as they "are normally not suitable for high-risk and complex surgery."

"The new treatment involves low invasiveness, and it is safe and well tolerated," Chan said.

Around 100 patients have accepted the treatment, and 40 percent of them have seen a complete necrosis of the tumor cells after treatment, with more than 10 percent becoming suitable to undergo operations such as liver transplantation.

Chan said the team is working on simplifying the treatment process and urged the government to provide subsidies for medicines used in the treatment to encourage more patients to try it.

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