Letter from the Editor-in-Chief

The 5th annual CCA Summit, held October 19-21, 2023, in Scottsdale, AZ, was a very successful meeting by all measures and has gradually become one of the key scientific meetings in biliary tract cancers.

As we approach the fall season, it is wonderful to reflect on some of the amazing research presented this year, most recently at the ASCO 2023 annual meeting. One of the major highlights of ASCO this year included the results of HER2/neu-directed novel therapies in biliary cancer. Shubham Pant, MD, MBBS, from MD Anderson Cancer Center, presented the results of the HERIZON-1 clinical trial of the bispecific antibody zanidatamab in HER2/neu-expressing biliary cancers.

This issue of CCA News highlights the Cholangiocarcinoma Foundation (CCF) 10th Annual Conference held in April. This meeting was chaired by Dr Chiara Branconi, a Lord Kelvin Adam Smith Reader at the University of Glasgow and a medical oncologist with Beatson Cancer Centre; and Dr Laura Goff, medical director of the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center’s Hematology and Oncology Division.

Dr Javle provides his perspective on important abstracts presented at the ASCO Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium, held January 19-21, 2023, in San Francisco, CA.

We have recently concluded the 4th Annual CCA Summit, which was held on October 13-15, 2022, in Denver, Colorado.

On September 2, 2022, the US Food and Drug Administration approved durvalumab in combination with gemcitabine/cisplatin for advanced biliary tract cancers (BTCs) on the basis of the TOPAZ-1 study.

A letter from the Editor-in-Chief, Milind M. Javle, MD.

The 2022 ASCO GI Cancers Symposium clearly highlighted the rapid trajectory of clinical research in biliary tract cancers. One of the most eagerly anticipated studies, TOPAZ-1, was presented by Do-Youn Oh, MD, PhD, from Seoul National University Hospital in South Korea. This phase 3 clinical trial enrolled 685 patients and investigated the addition of the PD-L1–directed agent durvalu­mab to gemcitabine and cisplatin chemotherapy backbone versus these chemotherapies alone. The results demonstrated a statistically significant improvement in overall survival (OS), overall response rate (ORR), and progression-free survival (PFS), without dose-limiting toxicities.

The Third CCA Summit was held on October 21-22, 2021 in New Orleans. For the majority of the cholangiocarcinoma (CCA) community, this was their first “live” meeting since the pandemic.