Establishing a standard of care treatment for biliary tract cancer patients following surgery (capecitabine)

Narrative

Through our BILCAP trial, we established the standard of care for adjuvant biliary cancer treatment (an additional treatment, given to biliary cancer patients following surgery, to lower the risk that cancer will return). Although this study did not meet its primary endpoint of improving overall survival the results suggested that capecitabine can improve overall survival in patients with resected biliary tract cancer when used as adjuvant chemotherapy following surgery and could be considered as standard of care.

In 2019, the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) produced new Clinical Practice Guidelines recommending capecitabine for these patients (Valle co-authored these guidelines).

In October 2022, National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) named capecitabine as a preferred regime in adjuvant therapy for biliary tract cancer, based on the results of the BILCAP trial.

Impact date	2019
Category of impact	Health and wellbeing
Impact level	Benefit