Hepatocellular carcinoma: Could stem cell therapy ever be a viable solution?

Over the years, stem cells have always been believed to have great potential and may eventually be common use in the treatment of a variety of disease states. However, evidence of their use has only just started being collected and analyzed. We aim to review the evidence in medical literature for the use of stem cell therapy in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). The incidence of HCC has been increasing in the past 50 years, partly due to its association with cirrhosis. Current therapy has proved relatively ineffective and consequently there are no definitive treatment options. It is hoped that stem cell therapy may provide more effective results and may be carried forward as frontline therapy. Therefore, it is important to analyze the current evidence and to determine whether it supports clinical application of stem cell therapy. A through literature search was carried out on PubMed and Ovid Medline and cross referenced in January 2013 to determine all stem cell therapy trials in the treatment of liver disease. From this data, only those that focused on the treatment of HCC were included. Only two trials were found to study the effects of stem cell therapy in the treatment of HCC. Both trials extracted hematopoietic stem cells from the patients’ ileum. These were re-infused into the patient following portal vein embolization and liver regeneration noted. It was found that this therapy increased liver regeneration when compared to the placebo group. These positive results do not explain the lack of further research that has been carried out in this subject area and it would be impossible to draw valid conclusions on such a small evidence base. However, the increased interest in other disease states may suggest that stem cell therapy may provide more groundbreaking results and consequently the focus of research has shifted as such.