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CASE REPORT article
Front. Oncol.
Sec. Gastrointestinal Cancers: Hepato Pancreatic Biliary Cancers
Volume 15 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fonc.2025.1459705
Case Report: Long Lasting Response with TKI for Combined
Provisionally accepted
Chiara Deiana 1
Andrea Palloni 2 Mirta Mosca 1 Francesco Vasuri 2 Stefano Chillotti 2 Simona Tavolari 2
Dario de Biase 2 Giorgio Frega 3
Elisa Giovannetti 4
Giovanni Brandi 1*- 1 University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy
- 2 IRCCS Azienda Ospedaliero-Universitaria di Bologna, Bologna, Italy
- 3 IRCCS Istituto Ortopedico Rizzoli, bologna, Italy
- 4 cancer center amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands
Combined hepatocellular-cholangiocarcinoma (cHCC-CCA) is a rare primary liver cancer, with intermediate biological characteristics between hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and cholangiocarcinoma (CCA). Given its rarity and the lack of robust data from randomized clinical trials, treatment is not standardized, and the choice on how to best manage the disease is left to the expertise of each institution. In the metastatic setting, given the more aggressive behavior of the CCA component, the usual approach is to start treatment with chemotherapy instead of tyrosine-kinase inhibitors (TKIs). We present a case report on a Caucasian male with a poor response to first-line treatment with chemotherapy directed against CCA, but with an excellent and long overall survival (OS) of 71 months, thanks to HCC-directed treatment with TKI. Here, we highlight the difficulty in selecting an appropriate treatment upfront for this rare cancer and we also discuss future perspectives regarding predictive tools, especially considering the recent genomic analysis of cHCC-CCA, and regarding the potential use of immunotherapy and target therapy.
Keywords: Combined hepatocellular-cholangiocarcinoma, TKI, Immunotherapy, Predictive tools, case report.
Received: 04 Jul 2024; Accepted: 20 Feb 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Deiana, Palloni, Mosca, Vasuri, Chillotti, Tavolari, de Biase, Frega, Giovannetti and Brandi. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Giovanni Brandi, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy
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