Our Clinical Trials Continually updated listing of our clinical trials for hepatobiliary cancer 
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Hepatobiliary cancers include those of the liver, gallbladder, bile ducts, and pancreas. Our research team also develops treatments for metastatic cancers that arise elsewhere in the body and spread to these organs.
Our team has developed techniques that spare healthy tissue during surgery and result in reduced blood loss. In addition, we have been at the forefront of nonsurgical approaches such as tumor embolization, radiofrequency ablation, and cryosurgery. We have also pioneered innovative chemotherapy approaches for these cancers, including new methods of delivering anticancer agents directly to the liver. Research by our pathologists and radiologists has led to advances in diagnostic and prognostic approaches.
Among our recent research accomplishments:
- We are investigating whether hepatic arterial infusion (HAI) chemotherapy is useful in patients with advanced primary liver cancer. Early results in a study evaluating HAI for unresectable primary hepatocellular cancer and peripheral cholangiocarcinoma showed a 43 percent response rate and median time to progression of 7.2 months -- much better than other regimens studied to date. This study also supported a potentially important role for dynamic contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging for predicting response. These initial investigations are being extended in a subsequent trial that combines regional chemotherapy with systemic angiogenesis inhibition. One of the hypotheses being evaluated is whether therapeutic response correlates with tumor expression of vascular endothelial growth factor receptor and cognate ligands. Proc ASCO 2005:23:4129. [ASCO Abstract]
- In patients with liver metastases from colorectal cancer, we found that HAI therapy increases the response rate and overall survival and is associated with better physical functioning and quality of life compared with systemic therapy. J Clin Oncol 2006;24:1395-1403. [PubMed Abstract]
- We also showed that neoadjuvant HAI chemotherapy in patients with colorectal liver metastases may allow significant downstaging, converting some patients to resectable status even though their cancers progressed on prior treatment regimens. N Engl J Med 2005;352:734-735. [PubMed Abstract]; J Clin Oncol 2005;23:4888-4896. [PubMed Abstract]
- We have developed a Familial Pancreatic Cancer Registry that is focused both on patients with pancreatic cancer and on individuals with a strong family history of this disease.
