Abstract.
Despite the lack of effective adjuvant chemotherapy and/or targeted therapy for resectable hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), standardization of complete tumor resection (R0) with hepatectomy or atypical liver tumor resection is currently associated with 5-year recurrence and overall survival rate of 60%. The recent approval of regorafenib by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA)1 for unresectable or metastatic HCC, guarantees the conduction of phase III randomized controlled trials (RCTs) evaluating the efficacy of regorafenib in the adjuvant setting. Although the multi-kinase inhibitor regorafenib is more effective than sorafenib, the recent failure of sorafenib  to provide to provide positive results in a phase III RCT in the adjuvant setting, limits the expectation of regorafenib in the early stage tumors after surgical resection.
This opinion article discusses strengthens and limitations of regorafenib and explains challenges and future perspectives of NGS technologies to discover novel both biomarkers and therapeutic targets for a more precise predictive mutation and molecular comprehensive targeting of individual patients with early or advances HCC.

(Citation: Gastric & Breast Cancer 2017; 12(2): 73-78)

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