Mayo Clinic Discovers Highly Successful New Treatment for Bile Duct Cancer Patients

Thursday, May 11, 2000

Patients who have successfully completed the protocol are available for interviews. The patients are located in Minnesota, Georgia, Ohio, Wisconsin, and Michigan.

Jesse Bradley 507-266-0189 (days) 507-284-2511 (evenings) e-mail: newsbureau@mayo.edu

EMBARGOED: Hold for release until Thursday, May 11, 2000 at 3:30 p.m. CDT

Mayo Clinic Discovers Highly Successful New Treatment for Bile Duct Cancer Patients

ROCHESTER, MINN. – According to a Mayo Clinic study published in this month's edition of Liver Transplantation, patients with bile duct cancer who also need a liver transplant now have a promising treatment — radiation and chemotherapy, before transplantation. Prior to this protocol, patients had no therapeutic options.

Mayo Clinic is one of a few medical centers in the country to offer this treatment option.

"This protocol represents a highly successful unique therapeutic option for many patients with previously untreatable cholangiocarcinoma," says Gregory Gores, M.D., a Mayo Clinic liver transplant specialist and lead author of the study.

Of the 25 patients, 19 were enrolled in the protocol. Eleven completed the protocol with a successful liver transplant. All had early stage disease in the removed liver, except for one patient. All patients who underwent liver transplantation are alive – all patients are at least a year out from the transplant procedure with a median follow-up of 44 months. Only one patient has developed tumor relapse.

The study dealt with patients who had cholangiocarcinoma, a cancer that arises from the cells of the bile ducts, which drain the liver. People with liver disease involving the bile ducts are at risk for getting this type of cancer because of the inflammation and scarring.

Cholangiocarcinoma occurs in about five out of 100,000 people and is most prevalent in people ages 50 to 70. Between 2,000 and 5,000 people annually are diagnosed with this form of cancer. Cholangiocarcinoma is the second most common primary malignant tumor of the liver.

"The current study demonstrates that, for a highly selected group of patients with cholangiocarcinoma, results after the liver transplant plus pretransplant therapy can be very encouraging," says Gores. "Before this point, no other treatment options were available for this group of patients." ###

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