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Pembrolizumab and stereotactic radiotherapy combined in subjects with advanced HCC: A phase II study (PEMRAD).

2025· article· en· W4406869106 on OpenAlexaff
Grainne M. O’Kane, Aruz Mesci, Eric Xueyu Chen, Cynthia M Bocaya, Raymond Jang, Ben X. Wang, Rebecca M. Prince, Giselle M. Boukhaled, Aisling Barry, Mark Doherty, David Wong, Lisa Wang, Anna Dodd, Laura A. Dawson, Jennifer J. Knox

Bibliographic record

VenueJournal of Clinical Oncology · 2025
Typearticle
Languageen
FieldMedicine
TopicCancer Immunotherapy and Biomarkers
Canadian institutionsUniversity of TorontoToronto General HospitalUniversity Health NetworkPrincess Margaret Cancer Centre
Fundersnot available
KeywordsMedicinePembrolizumabStereotactic radiotherapyOncologyHepatocellular carcinomaRadiosurgeryRadiation therapyInternal medicineNuclear medicineRadiologyCancerImmunotherapy

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

602 Background: Combination approaches of immune-checkpoint inhibitors and locoregional therapies have an increasing role in advanced HCC. Methods: The PEMRAD phase II trial investigated the efficacy of combination pembrolizumab and stereotactic body radiation (SBRT) following progression on sorafenib. Patients with advanced HCC, ECOG 0-1 and Childs-Pugh A were eligible. Patients received pembrolizumab on day 1 followed by SBRT starting Day 2 and delivered in five fractions. Pembrolizumab was continued every 21 days until progression, unacceptable toxicity or patient withdrawal. The primary endpoint was objective response rate (ORR) as measured by RECISTv 1.1. hypothesizing an increase to 40% with the combination. Tissue and liquid biopsies were collected for correlative analyses including multiplex IHC, longitudinal CyTOF and dynamic cytokine changes. Results: The trial was stopped early due to a shift in the treatment landscape. Between March 2018 and March 2023 18 patients of a planned 22 patients were enrolled and treated with combination therapy. Of these 10 (55%) had evidence of macrovascular invasion (MVI) and 15 (83%) had extrahepatic disease; viral hepatitis was the underlying etiology in 50%. The ORR was 41% meeting the proposed endpoint. Median number of cycles of pembrolizumab was 7.5 (2-35) .The median number of lesions treated by SBRT was 3 (1-5) and the median dominant gross tumour volume was 184 cc (IQR 69-285). The median PFS was 5.4 (2.8-9.9) months and median OS 12.6 (5.7-25.8) months. Of the 10 patients with macrovascular invasion 5 (50%) had evidence of a vascular thrombus response by RECIST criteria including 1 complete response. Treatment related adverse events ≥ grade 3 were reported in 5 patients (28%). One death due to myocarditis was attributed to treatment. Conclusions: In a poor prognostic group of patients in the second line setting, the combination of SBRT and pembrolizumab demonstrated high ORR and may have a specific role in patients with MVI. Correlative analyses will be presented at the meeting. Clinical trial information: NCT03316872 .

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame machine prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.002
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.001
Version: metacan-v3-hybrid-931329e0061cValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesnone
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Non-randomized trial · Consensus signal: none
GenreCandidate signal: Empirical · Consensus signal: Empirical
Teacher disagreement score0.004
Threshold uncertainty score0.014

Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0020.001
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0010.001
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0020.001
Bibliometrics0.0010.000
Science and technology studies0.0000.001
Scholarly communication0.0010.001
Open science0.0010.000
Research integrity0.0010.002
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0040.001

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.052
GPT teacher head0.467
Teacher spread0.415 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.

The models applied no category: nothing in the taxonomy fit this work.
Study designNon-randomized trial
Domainnot available
GenreEmpirical

How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".

Quick stats

Citations2
Published2025
Admission routes1
Has abstractyes

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