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©The Author(s) 2015. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastrointest Oncol. Nov 15, 2015; 7(11): 338-346
Published online Nov 15, 2015. doi: 10.4251/wjgo.v7.i11.338
Published online Nov 15, 2015. doi: 10.4251/wjgo.v7.i11.338
Immunotherapeutic approaches in biliary tract carcinoma: Current status and emerging strategies
Eric I Marks, Department of Medicine, Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, Hershey, PA 17033, United States
Nelson S Yee, Division of Hematology-Oncology, Program of Experimental Therapeutics, Department of Medicine, Penn State Hershey Medical Center, Penn State Hershey Cancer Institute, Hershey, PA 17033-0850, United States
Author contributions: Marks EI and Yee NS conceived and designed the study, reviewed the literature, collected and analyzed the data, and wrote the paper.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors declare no conflict of interest in 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: Nelson S Yee, MD, PhD, Division of Hematology-Oncology, Program of Experimental Therapeutics, Department of Medicine, Penn State Hershey Medical Center, Penn State Hershey Cancer Institute, 500 University Drive, Hershey, PA 17033-0850, United States. nyee@hmc.psu.edu
Telephone: +1-717-5310003 Fax: +1-717-5315076
Received: June 28, 2015
Peer-review started: July 11, 2015
First decision: July 28, 2015
Revised: August 17, 2015
Accepted: September 16, 2015
Article in press: September 18, 2015
Published online: November 15, 2015
Peer-review started: July 11, 2015
First decision: July 28, 2015
Revised: August 17, 2015
Accepted: September 16, 2015
Article in press: September 18, 2015
Published online: November 15, 2015
Core Tip
Core tip: Advances in cancer immunology have led to development of novel therapeutics that focuses on enhancing the immune system against biliary tract cancer. These include peptide- or dendritic cell-based vaccines, adoptive immunotherapy, and immunostimulatory cytokines. Immunotherapy is generally well tolerated with good potential for developing into treatment. The efficacy of immunotherapy may be improved by reversal of tumor-associated immunosuppression and through discovery of novel antigen targets. Integration of targeted immunotherapeutics with molecular profiling of biliary tumor is expected to make a positive impact on advancing towards the goal of developing precision treatment of patients with this highly lethal disease.