A completed multicenter, multinational, randomized phase III clinical study of a combination treatment of sorafenib with erlotinib (SEARCH trial, NCT00901901), a EGFR inhibitor, did not show that the addition of erlotinib to sorafenib met the primary endpoint, and the median OS and TTP were not significantly different in the experimental and control groups37, indicating that the inhibition of EGFR may not help sorafenib to improve the survival in patients with advanced HCC. The gene discussed is EGFR; the disease is hepatocellular carcinoma.