Transarterial chemoembolization outcomes for advanced hepatocellular carcinoma vs sorafenib and best supportive care in a sub-Saharan African cohort
Sanju Sobnach, Karla Christina Sousa Silva, Ebtesam Abdel-Rashid Abdel-Shafy, Muhammad Emmamally, Catherine Wendy Spearman, Marc Bernon, Mark W Sonderup, Keith Venter, Inae Kim, Urda Kotze, Rajshree Segobin, Dale K Creamer, Stefano Cacciatore, Luiz Fernando Zerbini, Eduard Jonas
Sanju Sobnach, Muhammad Emmamally, Marc Bernon, Keith Venter, Inae Kim, Urda Kotze, Eduard Jonas, Department of Surgery, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Cape Town, Cape Town 7925, Western Cape, South Africa
Karla Christina Sousa Silva, Luiz Fernando Zerbini, Cancer Genomics Group, International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology, Cape Town 7925, Western Cape, South Africa
Ebtesam Abdel-Rashid Abdel-Shafy, Stefano Cacciatore, Bioinformatics Unit, International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology, Cape Town 7925, Western Cape, South Africa
Catherine Wendy Spearman, Mark W Sonderup, Department of Medicine, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Cape Town, Cape Town 7925, Western Cape, South Africa
Rajshree Segobin, Dale K Creamer, Division of Radiology, University of Cape Town, Cape Town 7925, Western Cape, South Africa
Co-first authors: Sanju Sobnach and Karla Christina Sousa Silva.
Co-corresponding authors: Luiz Fernando Zerbini and Eduard Jonas.
Author contributions: Sobnach S and Silva KCS made equal contributions as co-first authors; Sobnach S, Cacciatore S, Zerbini LF, and Jonas E did conceptualization; Sobnach S, Emmamally M, Spearman CW, Bernon M, Sonderup MW, Venter K, Kim I, Kotze U, Segobin R, Creamer DK, and Jonas E performed methodology and data curation; Emmamally M, Venter K, Kim I, and Kotze U contributed to software; Sobnach S, Emmamally M, Venter K, Kim I, and Jonas E contributed to validation; Sobnach S, Silva KCS, Abdel-Shafy EAR, Emmamally M, Venter K, Kim I, Kotze U, Cacciatore S, and Jonas E contributed to formal analysis; Sobnach S, Silva KCS, Abdel-Shafy EAR, Emmamally M, Venter K, Kim I, Kotze U, Cacciatore S, Zerbini LF, and Jonas E contributed to investigation; Sobnach S, Emmamally M, Venter K, Kim I, and Kotze U contributed to resources; Sobnach S, Silva KCS, Abdel-Shafy EAR, Cacciatore S, and Jonas E did visualization; Zerbini LF and Jonas E did supervision and made equal contributions as co-corresponding authors; Sobnach S, Emmamally M, Venter K, Kim I, Kotze U, and Jonas E performed project administration; Sobnach S, Cacciatore S, Zerbini LF, and Jonas E acquired funding. All authors wrote the original draft preparation, reviewed and edited, and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.
Supported by International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology; and Harry Crossley Foundation at the University of Cape Town.
Institutional review board statement: The study was conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki and approved by the Ethic Committee of Faculty of Health Sciences at the University of Cape Town, No. IRB00001938.
Informed consent statement: The Ethics Committee granted a waiver of informed consent for the inclusion of participant data in the research database.
Conflict-of-interest statement: All the authors report no relevant conflicts of interest for this article.
STROBE statement: The authors have read the STROBE Statement-checklist of items, and the manuscript was prepared and revised according to the STROBE Statement-checklist of items.
Data sharing statement: All data produced in the present study are available upon reasonable request to the authors.
Open Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See:
https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/ Corresponding author: Luiz Fernando Zerbini, Director, Cancer Genomics Group, International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology, Anzio Road, Observatory, Cape Town 7925, Western Cape, South Africa.
luiz.zerbini@icgeb.org
Received: July 23, 2025
Revised: September 9, 2025
Accepted: October 31, 2025
Published online: December 14, 2025
Processing time: 140 Days and 20.4 Hours
