New agents on the horizon in hepatocellular carcinoma

Despite the successful approval and extensive application of sorafenib, the prognosis for patients with advanced hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) remains poor. Fortunately, there have been renewed and continued interests and active research in developing other molecularly targeted agents in HCC during the past few years. While there is early evidence of antitumor activity of several agents in phase I/II studies, phase III efforts with a few targeted agents have failed, highlighting the challenges of new drug development in HCC. This review summarizes the current status of other molecularly targeted agents under development in advanced HCC.