HGF as a biomarker for liver damage after radiotherapy
HGF as a biomarker for liver damage after radiotherapy
- Clinical Condition
- According with the American Cancer Research Institute, world-wide over 840,000 new cases of liver cancer will be diagnosed and over 600,000 people will die of this cancer.
- Current Practice
- Radiotherapy for liver cancer is potentially curative, but it rarely used because of the risk for radiation-induced liver disease (RILD), which could be lethal even in the absence of disease progression.
- Solution
- Our solution is a new biomarker to predict and prevent the significant risk for RILD.
- High pretreatment level of the circulating plasma hepatocyte growth factor (HGF) was associated with RILD in liver cancer patients treated with radiotherapy.
- Ongoing Phase III clinical trial at MGH to prove association.
- A provisional patent was filed on October 2018.
- License to companies that are focused on stereotactic body radiotherapy: proton or photon therapy.
