Does Immunotherapy Work For Bile Duct Cancer

Surgical resection of tumors is considered the best approach toward attempting a cure but less than half of patients whose tumors are surgically resected survive past five years and those whose tumors are not surgically removed face a median survival time of just.

Does immunotherapy work for bile duct cancer.

It can be used to treat some advanced bile duct cancers that cannot be removed by surgery or have spread to distant areas after at least one previous chemotherapy treatment. A patient with metastatic bile duct cancer treated with immunotherapy using her own mutation specific t cells has experienced regression of her metastatic lung and liver tumors that is ongoing for more than 2 years. Immunotherapy for bile duct cancer. Immunotherapy is the use of medicines to help a person s immune system better recognize and destroy cancer cells.

Many of these drugs are being tested in clinical trials to see if they might help treat bile duct cancer. Symptoms often go undetected until the disease is far advanced. Chemotherapy chemo is treatment with cancer killing drugs that are usually given into a vein iv or taken by mouth. Cholangiocarcinoma also known as bile duct cancer is steadily rising in incidence worldwide.

Immunotherapy is a new cancer treatment approach that uses drugs vaccines and other therapies to activate the immune system s natural defenses so it can fight cancer. National cancer institute steve rosenberg m d. To learn more about how drugs that work on the immune system are used to treat cancer see cancer immunotherapy. October 29 2015 by nci staff.

Pemigatinib pemazyre a fgfr2 inhibitor blocks the abnormal fgfr2 protein in bile duct cancer cells and keeps them from growing and spreading to other places. There are not yet any fda approved immunotherapies for bile duct cancer but researchers are actively conducting clinical trials.