The Changing Treatment Landscape of Cholangiocarcinoma
At the 2023 Great Debates and Updates in Gastrointestinal Malignancies meeting in Chicago, Milind Javle, MD, discusses the new options for treating patients with cholangiocarcinoma. Dr Javle focused on the advances made possible because of molecular therapy and molecular sequencing.
Transcript:
It's wonderful to be here in Chicago, discuss cholangiocarcinoma, a disease that is unfortunately rapidly increasing in incidence.
There's three kinds of biliary tract cancer, intrahepatic, extrahepatic cholangio, and gall bladder cancer. This field has changed quite dramatically with several drug approvals in the last three years.
This has been possible due to advent of molecular therapy with FGFR inhibitors, IDH1 inhibitors, and several others such as BRAF inhibitors, immunotherapy, making it into the NCCN guidelines. This has been possible because of molecular sequencing. I really encourage all patients with cholangiocarcinoma to have a biopsy and molecular sequencing for actionable mutations.
A recent development over the last year has been at the approval of immunotherapy with Durvalumab in the first line setting, and it's also exciting that the KEYNOTE-966 trial was also positive with pembrolizumab for first-line cholangiocarcinoma.
This is a rapidly evolving field, and I think patients have a lot of options here. It is important that we diagnose the patient early, we consider sequencing, and then keep an eye, open mind for these novel therapies, including checkpoint inhibitors and targeted therapies.
Source:
Javle M. “Improving the Management of Cholangiocarcinoma: Adopting Recent NCCN Guidelines to Improve Patients Care in Diagnosis, Molecular Testing, and Targeted Treatment Strategies.” Presented at: Great Debates and Updates in Gastroinestinal Malignancies; March 30-April 1, 2023; Chicago, IL
