Personalized Medicine for Patients with Liver, Biliary Tract, and Pancreatic Cancer

Cancers of the liver, biliary tract, and pancreas are among the gravest and most challenging issues for medical oncologists, being substantially chemo-resistant malignancies. In spite of the increasing incidence of hepato-biliary and pancreatic cancers, the initial diagnosis is often delayed due to the lack of specificity of the accompanying clinical symptoms. Apart from surgery when feasible, and unlike other tumor types, medical therapy has yet to provide significant improvement in the management of the advanced disease; thus, a limited number of new therapeutic agents have been approved in recent years. Nevertheless, in this still highly unsatisfactory scenario, the advances in genome science and in molecular and immuno-biologic knowledge of cancer are translating in a therapeutic and diagnostic improvement. Indeed, a personalized medicine approach may increasingly help to identify the more promising and effective individualized treatments for patients with hepato-biliary and pancreatic malignancies.