Frontier
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2016. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. Jan 21, 2016; 22(3): 906-916
Published online Jan 21, 2016. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v22.i3.906
Bisphosphonates as potential adjuvants for patients with cancers of the digestive system
Celina Ang, Erin Doyle, Andrea Branch
Celina Ang, Department of Medicine, Division of Hematology/Oncology, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY 10029, United States
Erin Doyle, Pre-doctoral Student, Graduate School of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY 10029, United States
Andrea Branch, Department of Medicine, Division of Hepatology, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY 10029, United States
Author contributions: Ang C and Branch A were co-conceptors of this review; Doyle E designed the accompanying figures; Ang C performed the literature review and wrote the manuscript.
Conflict-of-interest statement: None to report in relation to this manuscript.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Celina Ang, MD, Associate Professor, Department of Medicine, Division of Hematology/Oncology, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, Box 1079, New York, NY 10029, United States. andrea.branch@mssm.edu
Telephone: +1-212-8248584 Fax: +1-646-5379639
Received: June 10, 2015
Peer-review started: June 12, 2015
First decision: October 14, 2015
Revised: November 5, 2015
Accepted: December 8, 2015
Article in press: December 8, 2015
Published online: January 21, 2016
Processing time: 219 Days and 12.6 Hours
Core Tip

Core tip: Bisphosphonates demonstrate antineoplastic activity in various malignancies but have received little attention in cancers of the digestive tract. We review the preclinical and clinical experience with bisphosphonates in digestive cancers and discuss their potential therapeutic application in this disease group, particularly in the context of recent data on bisphosphonate-induced inhibition of human epidermal growth factor receptor signaling.