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Developments in Novel and Targeted Therapies for Biliary Tract Cancers
Rachna Shroff, MD, chief of Gastrointestinal Medical Oncology, University of Arizona Cancer Center, Tucson, reviews her presentation from the Great Debates and Updates in Gastrointestinal Malignancies August 2022 virtual meeting.
Dr Shroff highlights novel therapies for treating cholangiocarcinoma, diving into opportunities for utilization of precision oncology and development of targeted therapies for genetic alterations in these patients.
Transcript:
Hi, my name is Dr Rachna Shroff and I'm the Chief of GI Medical Oncology at the University of Arizona Cancer Center. At the most recent Great Debates and Updates in Gastrointestinal Malignancies meeting, I had the privilege of discussing novel therapies in biliary tract cancers, specifically in cholangiocarcinoma. It is such an exciting time right now in drug development for cholangiocarcinoma because this disease is the model for precision oncology and precision medicine. I discussed where we're at in terms of systemic treatments, especially as we have new data suggesting that the combination of chemotherapy and immunotherapy may actually work in biliary tract cancers.
Then I spent the rest of the time really highlighting what is an incredibly complex molecular landscape for biliary tract cancers, and how we have developed novel targeted therapies to go after a number of the genetic alterations that we see in biliary tract cancers. This includes FDA-approved drugs like fibroblast growth factor receptor (FGFR) inhibitors and isocitrate dehydrogenase (IDH) inhibitors, as well as some newer areas of drug discovery, like human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2) amplifications, BRAF mutations, and of course, immunotherapy, which remains at the forefront of mind as we try to come up with novel combinations to use immunotherapy in this disease.
