Biomarker reveals how aggressive biliary tract cancer is in patients
Home / Blog / [wpbb post:title]
From Jesper Anderson at the University of Copenhagen…
As biliary tract cancer (BTC) patients typically survive less than one year on standard-of-care chemotherapy, adapting prognostic biomarkers to guide their management remains challenging. Høgdall and colleagues measured serum IL-6, YKL-40, and CA19-9 before and during chemotherapy in 452 advanced biliary tract cancer patients. While all markers provided variable prognostic information prior to treatment, longitudinal analysis of IL-6 was superior in predicting death during treatment. Blocking IL-6 signaling with tocilizumab significantly increased response to gemcitabine in a mouse model of human BTC. Thus, the IL-6 axis may be prognostically informative and therapeutically attractive in this rare patient demographic.
To read more, click here