Treatment of Patients with Advanced Hepatocellular Carcinoma using Stem Cell Differentiation Stage Factors

Hepatocellular carcinoma represents the third leading cause of cancer-related death. Because HCC is multicentric with time, excluding the few transplanted patients, sooner or later it becomes untreatable with loco-regional therapies and, until some years ago, it was not responsive to systemic therapies. In 2005 a randomized trial indicated the efficacy of a product containing stem cell differentiation stage factors taken from zebrafish embryos during the stage in which the totipotent stem cells are differentiating into the pluripotent adult stem cells. In such a trial the patients, with “intermediate” and “advanced” HCC according to Barcelona Clinic Liver Cancer/American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases guidelines, presented benefit in terms of performance status and objective tumoral response, with some cases of complete response, that is, sustained disappearance of the neoplastic areas or blood supply therein, accompanied by normalization of alpha-fetoprotein...