OBJECTIVES:
* To study the safety and effectiveness of a strategy to establish robust anticancer immunologic body defenses by using low-dose radiation therapy to the liver cancer in order to increase tumor targetability; inject a body defense activator, polyinosinic-polycytidylic acid polylysine carboxymethylcellulose (poly ICLC, hiltonol, oncovir), into and around the cancer to activate sentinel dendritic cells to alarm body defenses; and shut down local production of factors that suppress the body's natural anticancer defenses by starving the cancer of its blood supply within the liver.
OUTLINE: Patients receive low-dose oral cyclophosphamide once daily on days 1-21 and undergo 3-dimensional conformal radiotherapy on days 21-23. On day 24, patients undergo an intra- or peri-tumoral polyinosinic-polycytidylic acid polylysine carboxymethylcellulose (poly ICLC) injection directly into the tumor followed by trans-hepatic artery embolization to the designated tumor. Patients receive poly ICLC subcutaneously on days 26, 35, 37, 42, 44, 49, and 51. Treatment repeats every 57 days for up to 3 courses in the absence of disease progression or unacceptable toxicity.
After completion of study treatment, patients are followed every 3 months for 1 year and then every 6 months thereafter.
