TP21 injection is a supramolecular compound that has completed early pharmacological and toxicological preclinical studies, as well as phase I and II clinical studies. Data from previous studies showed that TP21 injection has significant advantages over traditional platinum-based drugs in terms of broad spectrum, low toxicity, high efficacy and low drug resistance etc. The results of the Phase II TACE clinical exploratory study in hepatocellular carcinoma showed a trend for TP21 alone to be significantly better than epirubicin alone, and due to the small sample size, the available data were insufficient to demonstrate obvious advantage of this drug. Now, a confirmatory phase III clinical study of TACE for hepatocellular carcinoma is needed, which may continue to adopt the main design of the phase II clinical trial, in a single agent comparison form: all the subjects will be randomized 1:1 into TP21+lipiodol group (trial group), and epirubicin hydrochloride+lipiodol group (control group) to receive TACE treatment of either TP21+lipiodol or epirubicin hydrochloride+lipiodol. TACE treatment should be carried out for no more than 3 times in half a year to no more than 5 times within 1 year, and about 332 subjects will be enrolled, 166 for the trial group and the control group each.
To evaluate the effectiveness and safety of TP21 injection for TACE in treatment of hepatocellular carcinoma:~Primary efficacy endpoint: progression-free survival (PFS), which will be assessed by the Independent Review Committee according to the modified Response Evaluation Criteria in Solid Tumors (mRECIST).~Secondary efficacy endpoints: PFS, objective response rate (ORR), disease control rate (DCR), overall survival (OS), time to progression (TTP), 1-year progression-free survival, 1-year survival and 2-year survival assessed by the investigator.