Biomarker reveals how aggressive biliary tract cancer is in patients

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.