Microenvironment and tumor cells: two targets for new molecular therapies of hepatocellular carcinoma.
Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), is one of the most frequent human cancer and is characterized
by a high mortality rate. The aggressiveness appears strictly related to the liver pathological background on
which cancer develops. Inflammation and the consequent fibro/cirrhosis, derived from chronic injuries of
several origins (viral, toxic and metabolic) and observable in almost all oncological patients, represents the
most powerful risk factor for HCC and, at the same time, an important obstacle to the efficacy of systemic
therapy. Multiple microenvironmental cues, indeed, play a pivotal role in the pathogenesis, evolution and
recurrence of HCC as well as in the resistance to standard therapies observed in most of patients. The
identification of altered pathways in cancer cells and of microenvironmental changes, strictly connected in
pathogenic feedback loop, may permit to plan new therapeutic approaches targeting tumor cells and their
permissive microenvironment, simultaneously