Mark Yarchoan, Associate Professor at Johns Hopkins Hospital and Co-Founder and CSO at Adventris Pharmaceuticals, shared a post on LinkedIn:
“Does the Barcelona HCC classification still reflect current treatment practice in North America?
Today at the HCC-LIVE meeting, we introduced the new BEACON-HCC classification for public comment.
In pilot real-world cases, expert concordance was 100% with BEACON-HCC, compared with 58.6% using the 2022 BCLC framework, suggesting that evolving clinical practice may be outpacing existing staging paradigms.
Key differences include:
- Greater incorporation of clinical disease features, such as extent of intrahepatic tumor burden and vascular invasion
- Integration of tumor biology, including biomarkers such as AFP
- Recognition of emerging treatment approaches increasingly used in North America, including external beam radiation therapy (EBRT), transarterial radioembolization (TARE), and systemic–locoregional combination strategies
As treatment options for HCC expand, staging systems may need to evolve to better reflect real-world multidisciplinary decision-making.
Looking forward to the broader discussion and feedback from the field.”
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