SYSTEMATIC REVIEW article
Front. Oncol.
Sec. Gastrointestinal Cancers: Hepato Pancreatic Biliary Cancers
Efficacy and safety of TACE/HAIC combined with targeted immunotherapy versus targeted immunotherapy for advanced hepatocellular carcinoma: a meta-analysis
Provisionally accepted
- 1Haikou People's Hospital, Haikou, China
- 2Guangxi Medical University Cancer Hospital, Nanning, China
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Introduction: The purpose of this study was to investigate the efficacy and safety of triple therapy with transcatheter arterial chemoembolization (TACE)/hepatic arterial infusion chemotherapy (HAIC) in patients with advanced hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Methods: A systematic literature search of multiple databases ending with publications from May 2024 was conducted. Interventions with TACE/HAIC combined with targeted immunotherapy versus targeted immunotherapy and patients with advanced HCC were included in this meta-analysis. Data from the 13 included studies, encompassing 2,662 patients with HCC, were pooled using fixed-or random-effects models. The results are reported as hazard ratios (HRs) or risk ratios (RRs) with corresponding 95% confidence intervals (CIs). Results: In contrast to targeted immunotherapy, TACE/HAIC combined targeted immunotherapy can significantly improve overall survival (OS), progression-free survival (PFS) the disease control rate (DCR), and the objective response rate (ORR) in patients with advanced HCC. At the same time, the overall incidence of treatment-related adverse events (AEs) and treatment-related AEs of grade 3 or greater also increased, but only a few of the specific treatment-related AEs increased. Conclusions: Given that combined TACE/HAIC with targeted immunotherapy significantly improves patient OS, PFS, DCR, and ORR, it may become standard for the treatment of patients with advanced HCC.
Keywords: Hepatocellular Carcinoma, targeted therapy, Immunotherapy, Triple therapy, Dual therapy
Received: 19 Jul 2025; Accepted: 29 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Liao, Zhu and Zhang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Wenliang Zhu, zhupecker@aliyun.com
Jianquan Zhang, zjq197015@163.com
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.