Andrew X. Zhu

Andrew X. Zhu, MD, PhD is Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Director of the Liver Cancer Research Program at Massachusetts General Hospital, and is one of the preeminent clinical investigators in systemic therapy for hepatocellular carcinoma. He served as global principal investigator for the REFLECT trial, the landmark phase III study demonstrating non-inferiority of lenvatinib versus sorafenib as first-line therapy in advanced HCC—making lenvatinib the first new first-line agent approved in a decade and offering patients with high tumor burden and AFP-high HCC an effective alternative. Dr. Zhu also led the REACH-2 trial, which demonstrated that ramucirumab, a VEGFR2 antibody, significantly improved survival specifically in patients with serum AFP ≥400 ng/mL—establishing AFP as a predictive biomarker and opening the field of precision patient selection in HCC. His research program has advanced the biological understanding of VEGF/VEGFR signaling, resistance mechanisms to antiangiogenic agents, and the immune microenvironment of HCC. He has published extensively on hepatitis B-associated HCC, a dominant etiology in Asian populations, and has co-led joint international research initiatives.