Recent advances in systemic therapies and radiotherapy for gallbladder cancer

Adjuvant treatment is not routine following resection for gallbladder cancer as most regimens have low response rates. In the palliative setting, recent advances have been made regarding combination chemotherapies and both gemcitabine/cisplatin and gemcitabine/oxaliplatin appear to be superior to single-agent 5FU, which has very little efficacy in this disease. There are isolated reports of dramatic responses to targeted monoclonal agents. The role of radiotherapy has recently been revisited, however, its effectiveness when patients are adequately surgically treated remains to be demonstrated.