Loading
7 treatment settings, 5 with more than one named option. Each section lays out the options the standard of care names, what each is for, the trials behind them with their recorded results, the side effects and cautions on record, and questions to ask. Built from the cancer page's standard-of-care rows; nothing here is advice for your case.
Answer a few questions from a report and read the guideline statement that applies, quoted word for word with its source. Educational aids, not advice.
Contrast MRI and CT, biopsy, and comprehensive genomic profiling including RNA-based fusion detection for every patient.
MRI uses a strong magnet and radio waves, with no ionising radiation, to picture soft tissue in finer contrast than CT, so it is the standard scan for brain tumours, prostate, rectal cancer staging, liver lesions and breast screening in high-risk women. It is slow, expensive and blurred by movement.
A CT scan is a fast 3D X-ray that shows the size and shape of tumours and whether they have spread.
Sequencing hundreds of cancer genes at once from a biopsy to find the mutations a drug can target.
No trial record is attached to this row yet. The trials tab lists what is recruiting and the landmark trials for this cancer.
Add these to your appointment list, or take the full question set for this cancer.
Hepatectomy with lymph node dissection followed by six months of adjuvant capecitabine (BILCAP).
Capecitabine (Xeloda) is a tablet form of the chemotherapy fluorouracil. It is a backbone of treatment for bowel cancer and a standard option in advanced breast cancer.
OS 51.1 vs 36.4 months; ITT HR 0.81 (p=0.097), per-protocol HR 0.75.
No side-effect rates or interaction flags are recorded for these options yet. The side-effect lookup and interaction checker cover the products that have them.
Add these to your appointment list, or take the full question set for this cancer.
Radioembolisation, stereotactic radiotherapy or hepatic artery infusion in specialised centres, usually with systemic therapy; liver transplantation in trials.
Millions of tiny radioactive glass or resin beads are injected into the liver artery, lodging in the tumour and irradiating it from within.
Stereotactic body radiotherapy converges multiple beams with sub-millimetre accuracy to deliver tumour-destroying doses in one to five outpatient sessions, doing the job of surgery for inoperable early lung cancer and for metastases in liver, spine and brain. Tumour size and location limit its use, and late toxicity is a concern near the central airways.
Replacing the whole diseased liver cures both the cancer and the cirrhosis underneath it, for patients whose tumours are small enough.
No trial record is attached to this row yet. The trials tab lists what is recruiting and the landmark trials for this cancer.
Add these to your appointment list, or take the full question set for this cancer.
Gemcitabine and cisplatin with durvalumab (TOPAZ-1) or pembrolizumab (KEYNOTE-966).
Gemcitabine plus cisplatin has been the chemotherapy backbone for bile duct cancer since 2010 and is now given with immunotherapy.
A PD-L1 blocker that became standard after chemoradiation for stage III lung cancer, and now in bladder, biliary, and gastric cancers.
Pembrolizumab is a PD-1 blocking antibody approved in more than 40 settings, from melanoma and lung cancer to the first tumour-agnostic approval for mismatch-repair-deficient tumours in 2017, and before and after surgery in triple-negative breast cancer. A subcutaneous form arrived in 2025, and it is the backbone partner for ADCs and personalised neoantigen vaccines.
Averages across everyone diagnosed, often years ago. A median is the middle of a group: half the people counted lived longer than the figure shown, and some lived far longer. Your stage, subtype, age, fitness and the treatment you receive matter more than the average, and the numbers are improving quickly.
OS 12.7 vs 10.9 months, HR 0.83.
OS 11.7 vs 8.1 months, HR 0.64.
| Side effect | Any grade | Grade 3+ |
|---|---|---|
| Pneumonitis (any cause, PACIFIC) · vs 12.8% placebo; 1.1% fatal | 18.3% | - |
Rates from the label or pivotal trial as recorded on the product page; each grade 3+ figure links to its source.
| Side effect | Any grade | Grade 3+ |
|---|---|---|
| Hypothyroidism (immune-mediated) · Pooled monotherapy data, >2,800 patients | 8% | - |
| Pneumonitis (immune-mediated) · Pooled monotherapy data, >2,800 patients | 3.4% | - |
| Colitis (immune-mediated) · Pooled monotherapy data, >2,800 patients | 1.7% | - |
| Hepatitis (immune-mediated) · Pooled monotherapy data, >2,800 patients | 0.7% | - |
Rates from the label or pivotal trial as recorded on the product page; each grade 3+ figure links to its source.
Add these to your appointment list, or take the full question set for this cancer.
Pemigatinib (FIGHT-202) or futibatinib (FOENIX-CCA2); management of hyperphosphataemia and eye toxicity.
Pemigatinib was the first targeted therapy for bile duct cancer, for tumours with an FGFR2 gene fusion.
Futibatinib is a covalent FGFR inhibitor for FGFR2-fusion bile duct cancer, with the highest response rate of the first-generation drugs.
ORR 37%; PFS 7.0 months; OS 17.5 months.
ORR 42%; PFS 9.0 months; OS 21.7 months.
No side-effect rates or interaction flags are recorded for these options yet. The side-effect lookup and interaction checker cover the products that have them.
Add these to your appointment list, or take the full question set for this cancer.
Ivosidenib (ClarIDHy).
The first drug to block a mutant metabolic enzyme in cancer. With azacitidine it tripled survival in IDH1-mutated AML that could not take intensive chemotherapy.
PFS HR 0.37; crossover-adjusted OS HR 0.49.
| Side effect | Any grade | Grade 3+ |
|---|---|---|
| Differentiation syndrome · AGILE combination arm | 14% | - |
Rates from the label or pivotal trial as recorded on the product page; each grade 3+ figure links to its source.
Add these to your appointment list, or take the full question set for this cancer.
FOLFOX (ABC-06); trials.
FOLFOX is the workhorse chemotherapy combination for bowel cancer, used after surgery to cure and in advanced disease as the backbone that targeted drugs are added to.
Cytotoxic chemotherapy drugs (platinums, antimetabolites, microtubule agents and topoisomerase inhibitors) kill rapidly dividing cells by damaging DNA or the mitotic spindle. They still cure testicular cancer, lymphoma and leukaemia, and they are the warhead inside antibody-drug conjugates, but a narrow margin between effective and toxic doses is their limitation.
No trial record is attached to this row yet. The trials tab lists what is recruiting and the landmark trials for this cancer.
Add these to your appointment list, or take the full question set for this cancer.