Immunotherapy Options for Gall Bladder Cancer and Cholangiocarcinoma

Serhat SEKMEKa , Burak CİVELEKa
aAnkara Bilkent City Hospital, Department of Medical Oncology, Ankara, Türkiye

Sekmek S, Civelek B. Immunotherapy options for gall bladder cancer and cholangiocarcinoma. In: Şendur MAN, ed. Current Immunotherapy Landscape for Solid Tumors. 1st ed. Ankara: Türkiye Klinikleri; 2024. p.87-91.

ABSTRACT
Gallbladder cancers (GBC) and cholangiocarcinoma are rare tumors classified as biliary tract cancers (BTC). Until recently, BTC has been treated with surgery, chemotherapy, and radiotherapy. Despite these treatments, overall survival (OS) is only 8-15 months, with 2-year survival rates of 5% in cholangiocarcinoma and 13% in GBC. While minimal survival benefit was observed in BTC with immunotherapy treatments in the first studies, a significant survival increase was achieved by adding durvalumab treatment to gemcitabine cisplatin treatment in the TOPAZ-1 study. Similarly, in the KEYNOTE-966 study, positive results were obtained by adding pembrolizumab treatment to gemcitabine cisplatin treatment. With these results, the benefit of immunotherapy in BTC has been demonstrated, and there are many ongoing studies to achieve even better outcomes in BTCs with the use of both immune checkpoint inhibitors and other immunotherapy options.

Keywords: Gallbladder neoplasms; cholangiocarcinoma; immunotherapy

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