Conditions: Carcinoma, Hepatocellular
Keywords: Cancer Liver Cancer Hepatocellular carcinoma HCC
Allocation: RANDOMIZED | Intervention model: PARALLEL
Enrollment: 96
Healthy volunteers: no

Brief summary:
The purpose of this study is to evaluate the safety and efficacy of doxorubicin plus sorafenib versus doxorubicin plus placebo in patients with advanced hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC).

Detailed description:
In addition to the key secondary outcome parameters the following parameters will be assessed in an exploratory manner: relative time to progression (TTP), time to symptomatic progression (TTSP), response rate (RR) and overall survival between the 2 study populations.

The possible and potential predictive assays of clinical benefit through an assessment of the correlation between the defined baseline characteristics and key clinical endpoints.

The safety and tolerability will be assessed in the adverse event section. Doxorubicin pharmacokinetics in HCC patients treated with sorafenib versus placebo will be compared and the pharmacokinetic data will be correlated with doxorubicin-related adverse events (i.e., cardiotoxicity).

Arms:
arm 1: "Sorafenib + Doxorubicin" -- combination therapy: Sorafenib (Nexavar, BAY43-9006) 200 mg tablets by mouth (orally) twice daily + doxorubicin 60 mg/m2 intravenous infusion every 21 days for 6 cycles (18 weeks) arm 2: "Placebo + Doxorubicin" -- monotherapy: Sorafenib (Nexavar, BAY43-9006) matching placebo tablets by mouth (orally) twice daily + doxorubicin 60 mg/m2 intravenous infusion every 21 days for 6 cycles (18 weeks)

Interventions: intervention 1: Sorafenib (Nexavar, BAY43-9006) plus Doxorubicin intervention 2: Doxorubicin/Placebo
Intervention descriptions: intervention 1: Multi kinase inhibitor plus Chemotherapy intervention 2: Chemotherapy plus Placebo

Protocol document: