Currently, response to treatment for cholangiocarcinoma is primarily assessed with radiologic tools, which are used to estimate the change in tumor size. However, radiologic imaging can hardly capture the change in tumour activities and has been criticized for not being adequately predicting the prognosis of patients with CCA. Serial serum tumour markers documented during clinical management of patients with CCA, represented by carbohydrate antigen 19-9 (CA 19-9) response in current clinical practice, have been shown to increase the accuracy of radiologic tumour response assessment in those patients with intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma (iCCA). And yet, the low sensitivity of CA 19-9 in early or intermediate stages may limit its use in neoadjuvant or transformative settings of patients with CCA. The standard tumour response assessment tool is still lacking.
In recent decades, numerous biological markers at tissue and molecular levels have been shown to be correlated with CCA and may thus yield a potential role in therapy response evaluation. Recent advances in novel technology including artificial intelligence may facilitate integrating currently identified biological molecular and radiological tools into the framework of CCA treatment assessment and indicate the development of future treatment response evaluation strategies.
In this Research Topic, we focus on investigating the clinic-radiologic-pathologic validation of current response evaluation criteria, exploring therapy response strategies based on molecular tissue biomarkers and histology, and developing future response evaluation criteria of cholangiocarcinoma, aiming at bringing together information on biological and radiological insights and implying novel and comprehensive strategies for treatment response evaluation in cholangiocarcinoma.
Specifically, research focusing on the following subtopics is highly welcome:
1. The role of serial biomarkers monitoring in predicting pharmaco-resistance during the long-term course of
treatment response assessment of patients with CCA, especially for those who received targeted therapies (i.e.,
fibroblast growth factor receptor-2 fusions and isocitrate dehydrogenase-1 and -2 mutations).
2. The potential role of artificial intelligence (AI) in increasing the accuracy of therapy response evaluation among
patients with CCA
3. Liquid biopsy for treatment response evaluation in cholangiocarcinoma
o Serum biomarkers in current clinical management practice
o New serum biomarkers which were estimated or under developing process (i.e., panels of serum
metabolites or proteins isolated from serum extracellular vesicles, based on proteins, gut bacteria or
metabolites)
o Genomic alterations
4. Radiologic tools for treatment response evaluation in cholangiocarcinoma
o Comparison of accuracy of current radiologic evaluation criteria in assessing treatment response of
cholangiocarcinoma
o The role of quantitative image data and features in conventionally used radiologic tools including MR or
CT
o Potential role of PET-MR, PET-CT, CEUS in evaluating treatment response of cholangiocarcinoma
5. Combination of liquid biopsy and radiologic tools.
Please note: manuscripts consisting solely of bioinformatics or computational analysis of public genomic or transcriptomic databases which are not accompanied by validation (independent cohort or biological validation in vitro or in vivo) are out of scope for this section and will not be accepted as part of this Research Topic.
Currently, response to treatment for cholangiocarcinoma is primarily assessed with radiologic tools, which are used to estimate the change in tumor size. However, radiologic imaging can hardly capture the change in tumour activities and has been criticized for not being adequately predicting the prognosis of patients with CCA. Serial serum tumour markers documented during clinical management of patients with CCA, represented by carbohydrate antigen 19-9 (CA 19-9) response in current clinical practice, have been shown to increase the accuracy of radiologic tumour response assessment in those patients with intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma (iCCA). And yet, the low sensitivity of CA 19-9 in early or intermediate stages may limit its use in neoadjuvant or transformative settings of patients with CCA. The standard tumour response assessment tool is still lacking.
In recent decades, numerous biological markers at tissue and molecular levels have been shown to be correlated with CCA and may thus yield a potential role in therapy response evaluation. Recent advances in novel technology including artificial intelligence may facilitate integrating currently identified biological molecular and radiological tools into the framework of CCA treatment assessment and indicate the development of future treatment response evaluation strategies.
In this Research Topic, we focus on investigating the clinic-radiologic-pathologic validation of current response evaluation criteria, exploring therapy response strategies based on molecular tissue biomarkers and histology, and developing future response evaluation criteria of cholangiocarcinoma, aiming at bringing together information on biological and radiological insights and implying novel and comprehensive strategies for treatment response evaluation in cholangiocarcinoma.
Specifically, research focusing on the following subtopics is highly welcome:
1. The role of serial biomarkers monitoring in predicting pharmaco-resistance during the long-term course of
treatment response assessment of patients with CCA, especially for those who received targeted therapies (i.e.,
fibroblast growth factor receptor-2 fusions and isocitrate dehydrogenase-1 and -2 mutations).
2. The potential role of artificial intelligence (AI) in increasing the accuracy of therapy response evaluation among
patients with CCA
3. Liquid biopsy for treatment response evaluation in cholangiocarcinoma
o Serum biomarkers in current clinical management practice
o New serum biomarkers which were estimated or under developing process (i.e., panels of serum
metabolites or proteins isolated from serum extracellular vesicles, based on proteins, gut bacteria or
metabolites)
o Genomic alterations
4. Radiologic tools for treatment response evaluation in cholangiocarcinoma
o Comparison of accuracy of current radiologic evaluation criteria in assessing treatment response of
cholangiocarcinoma
o The role of quantitative image data and features in conventionally used radiologic tools including MR or
CT
o Potential role of PET-MR, PET-CT, CEUS in evaluating treatment response of cholangiocarcinoma
5. Combination of liquid biopsy and radiologic tools.
Please note: manuscripts consisting solely of bioinformatics or computational analysis of public genomic or transcriptomic databases which are not accompanied by validation (independent cohort or biological validation in vitro or in vivo) are out of scope for this section and will not be accepted as part of this Research Topic.