What topics and trends defined most-cited Hepatocellular Carcinoma Treatment and Prognosis research in the Class of 2026?
Immune checkpoint inhibitor therapy, PD-1/PD-L1 inhibitors, and sorafenib anchor the Class of 2026 HCC cohort, with combination immunotherapy, CTLA-4 inhibition, and locoregional-surgical themes co-prominent. From Class of 2025 to 2026, durvalumab–tremelimumab and pembrolizumab rose sharply while transarterial chemoembolization and VEGF inhibition receded among top-cited work.
At a glance
- Field
- Hepatocellular Carcinoma Treatment and Prognosis
- Cohort label
- Class of 2026 (2024 publications)
- Papers analyzed
- 8,598
- Papers ranked
- 20
- Top topics in ranked papers
- Immune checkpoint inhibitor therapy, PD-1/PD-L1 inhibitor, sorafenib, combination immunotherapy, CTLA-4 inhibition
- Publication window
- Jan 1, 2024 – Dec 31, 2024
- Eligibility
- Research articles; reviews excluded
- Citation window
- 18 months post-publication
- 18m citation range
- 43–197
- Data source
- OpenAlex · Retrieved Jul 2026
- License
- CC BY 4.0
Rankings
20 papers ranked by 18-month citation count
Precision treatment in advanced hepatocellular carcinoma
Cancer Cell202410.1016/j.ccell.2024.01.007
Four-year overall survival update from the phase III HIMALAYA study of tremelimumab plus durvalumab in unresectable hepatocellular carcinoma
Annals of Oncology202410.1016/j.annonc.2024.02.005
Systemic Therapy for Advanced Hepatocellular Carcinoma: ASCO Guideline Update
Journal of Clinical Oncology202410.1200/jco.23.02745
Nivolumab (NIVO) plus ipilimumab (IPI) vs lenvatinib (LEN) or sorafenib (SOR) as first-line treatment for unresectable hepatocellular carcinoma (uHCC): First results from CheckMate 9DW.
Journal of Clinical Oncology202410.1200/jco.2024.42.17_suppl.lba4008
EMERALD-1: A phase 3, randomized, placebo-controlled study of transarterial chemoembolization combined with durvalumab with or without bevacizumab in participants with unresectable hepatocellular carcinoma eligible for embolization.
Journal of Clinical Oncology202410.1200/jco.2024.42.3_suppl.lba432
Immune checkpoint inhibitors and anti-vascular endothelial growth factor antibody/tyrosine kinase inhibitors with or without transarterial chemoembolization as first-line treatment for advanced hepatocellular carcinoma (CHANCE2201): a target trial emulation study
EClinicalMedicine202410.1016/j.eclinm.2024.102622
Portal Venous and Hepatic Arterial Coefficients Predict Post-Hepatectomy Overall and Recurrence-Free Survival in Patients with Hepatocellular Carcinoma: A Retrospective Study
Journal of Hepatocellular Carcinoma202410.2147/jhc.s462168
The #HOPE4LIVER Single-Arm Pivotal Trial for Histotripsy of Primary and Metastatic Liver Tumors
Radiology202410.1148/radiol.233051
Stereotactic Body Radiotherapy vs Sorafenib Alone in Hepatocellular Carcinoma
JAMA Oncology202410.1001/jamaoncol.2024.5403
Pharmacogenomic profiling of intra-tumor heterogeneity using a large organoid biobank of liver cancer
Cancer Cell202410.1016/j.ccell.2024.03.004
Adjuvant sintilimab in resected high-risk hepatocellular carcinoma: a randomized, controlled, phase 2 trial
Nature Medicine202410.1038/s41591-023-02786-7
Trends in Hepatocellular Carcinoma Mortality Rates in the US and Projections Through 2040
JAMA Network Open202410.1001/jamanetworkopen.2024.45525
Histological predictors of aggressive recurrence of hepatocellular carcinoma after liver resection
Journal of Hepatology202410.1016/j.jhep.2024.06.018
Intention-to-treat outcomes of patients with hepatocellular carcinoma receiving immunotherapy before liver transplant: The multicenter VITALITY study
Journal of Hepatology202410.1016/j.jhep.2024.09.003
Pathological response following neoadjuvant immune checkpoint inhibitors in patients with hepatocellular carcinoma: a cross-trial, patient-level analysis
The Lancet Oncology202410.1016/s1470-2045(24)00457-1
Nivolumab plus ipilimumab combination therapy in patients with advanced hepatocellular carcinoma previously treated with sorafenib: 5-year results from CheckMate 040
Annals of Oncology202410.1016/j.annonc.2024.03.005
Radiofrequency Ablation Versus Stereotactic Body Radiotherapy for Recurrent Small Hepatocellular Carcinoma: A Randomized, Open-Label, Controlled Trial
Journal of Clinical Oncology202410.1200/jco-24-01532
APASL clinical practice guidelines on systemic therapy for hepatocellular carcinoma-2024
Hepatology International202410.1007/s12072-024-10732-z
Biomarkers and prognostic factors of PD-1/PD-L1 inhibitor-based therapy in patients with advanced hepatocellular carcinoma
Biomarker Research202410.1186/s40364-023-00535-z
Survival Outcomes Among Patients With Hepatocellular Carcinoma in a Large Integrated US Health System
JAMA Network Open202410.1001/jamanetworkopen.2024.35066
Topic trends
Dominant research themes and year-over-year shifts in Hepatocellular Carcinoma Treatment and Prognosis
What Topics Define the Class of 2026?
Among the highest 18-month-cited hepatocellular carcinoma treatment and prognosis papers, the informative topic landscape is organized around specific regimens and treatment pathways rather than generic disease or survival-endpoint labels. Immune checkpoint inhibitor therapy leads at 24 of 50 papers (normalized frequency 0.48), followed by PD-1/PD-L1 inhibitors (20 papers, 0.40) and sorafenib (19 papers, 0.38)—a trio that frames how the field still benchmarks new evidence against checkpoint blockade and the landmark tyrosine-kinase era. A second tier clusters combination strategies and named protocols: combination immunotherapy, CTLA-4 inhibition, atezolizumab plus bevacizumab, durvalumab plus tremelimumab, nivolumab, and pembrolizumab, alongside VEGF-pathway agents such as lenvatinib and bevacizumab. Surgical and locoregional themes are co-prominent rather than peripheral—hepatectomy, unresectable hepatocellular carcinoma, locoregional therapy, transarterial chemoembolization, and downstaging appear alongside Barcelona Clinic Liver Cancer staging, alpha-fetoprotein, Child-Pugh class, and cirrhosis. RECIST 1.1 and tumor microenvironment remain visible as trial-structure vocabulary. Together, the pattern portrays a field where high-impact 2024 publications debate which systemic immuno-oncology combinations to deploy, how to integrate locoregional and surgical options for unresectable or downstaged disease, and how to stage and select patients across the BCLC framework.

How Did Topics Shift from the Class of 2025 to the Class of 2026?
Comparing normalized concept frequencies between the Class of 2025 (2023 publications) and Class of 2026 (2024 publications) reveals a cohort pivoting from endpoint-heavy immuno-oncology reporting toward broader systemic-treatment narratives and emerging combination regimens. Systemic therapy rose from a normalized frequency of 0.20 to 0.30, one of the largest sustained gains among core clinical themes. CTLA-4 inhibition more than quadrupled (0.04 to 0.18), and nivolumab, pembrolizumab, and durvalumab-based combinations—including durvalumab plus tremelimumab—showed sharp increases, consistent with maturing long-term survival updates and new first-line trial readouts entering the citation leaderboard. Sorafenib remained highly cited in both cohorts but edged higher in 2024, underscoring its continuing role as a comparator backbone even as checkpoint combinations advance. Several methodological and legacy-treatment topics retreated: hepatic artery infusion chemotherapy, propensity score matching, and generic survival-analysis framing disappeared from the top-ranked concept set, suggesting less emphasis on older regional-chemotherapy paradigms and observational matching studies among the most cited work. Progression-free survival and objective response rate appeared more prominently in the 2025 cohort than in 2026, while overall survival and immune checkpoint inhibitor therapy held steady at the top—implying that the field's center of gravity is shifting from reporting short-term response metrics toward durable survival evidence and expanded combination immunotherapy strategies.

Methodology
PRI identifies high-impact research using a transparent, topic-agnostic framework applied consistently across scientific domains. Bibliographic records are drawn from OpenAlex, including publication dates, citation relationships, and document types.
This ranking covers the Class of 2026 cohort: journal articles published in 2024. Reviews and other non-article document types are excluded to ensure comparability.
Research impact is quantified with an 18-month post-publication citation window—the number of citing works published within 18 months of each paper's publication date. This metric captures early impact while controlling for publication age.
An LLM-based relevance classifier then reviews each candidate's title and abstract to confirm substantive alignment with the target domain. Only papers classified as relevant appear in the final ranking.
Zheng Su, Tinsley Li, Thematic Shifts in Early-High-Impact Cancer Genomics and Diagnostics Research: A Bibliometric and Semantic Analysis. bioRxiv 2026.07.04.736459; doi: https://doi.org/10.64898/2026.07.04.736459
Cite this ranking
Pepkio Research Index (PRI). Topics and Trends in Most Cited Hepatocellular Carcinoma Treatment and Prognosis Papers, Class of 2026. https://pri.pepkio.com/top-papers/hepatocellular-carcinoma-treatment-and-prognosis/2026. Accessed 2026-07-13. Zheng Su, Tinsley Li, Thematic Shifts in Early-High-Impact Cancer Genomics and Diagnostics Research: A Bibliometric and Semantic Analysis. bioRxiv 2026.07.04.736459; doi: https://doi.org/10.64898/2026.07.04.736459
Source data
The full ranking corpus and analysis files are openly available on an external repository. Please cite the dataset below when reusing this data.
View source dataset →PRI Team (2026). PRI results: HCC Treatment and Prognosis (T10073) — Class of 2025 and Class of 2026 cohorts. Figshare. https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.32902769
