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Drugs designed to target HER2-postive breast cancer could also benefit some patients with bile duct cancer, according to results of a patient trial. Bile duct cancer is rare, treatment options are limited, and the survival rates are low. The trial also suggests that a wider group of breast cancer patients—those with HER2-mutated breast cancer—could be treated with these drugs. In the trial, researchers used a combination of tucatinib and trastuzumab to treat patients with a variety of different tumors, all of which had signs of changes to a protein called human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2). The phase II...

A new personalized cancer treatment can radically improve the outlook for some patients with bile duct cancer, finds an international multicenter trial involving researchers. The clinical trial found that patients who were otherwise facing end of life care survived for up to two years when treated with the drug futibatinib. In September last year, data from the FOENIX-CCA2 trial led to the FDA to approve futibatinib. Futibatinib targets a particular genetic alteration, called FGFR2 fusion, which is found in around 14% of bile duct cancers. Of those diagnosed annually in the UK with bile duct cancer, which comprises cholangiocarcinoma and...

This is important because a biliary stent is only installed if a tumor was large enough to cause blockage of the bile duct from the liver to the intestine. It is typically performed in cases where the patient has cancer on the duct itself and often predicates liver cancer. Again the stent is typically only used in advanced cases and often only surgery is done for early cases: