# Gallbladder cancer

Source: https://onco.cc/key-papers/paper-roa-gallbladder-cancer-primer-nat-rev-dis-primers-2022/  
OnCo record `paper-roa-gallbladder-cancer-primer-nat-rev-dis-primers-2022` (Key paper). Data CC BY-NC 4.0, attribute "Data from OnCo (onco.cc)"; commercial use needs a licence.

## TL;DR

The 2022 Nature Reviews primer on gallbladder cancer: the commonest biliary cancer, mostly found by chance at gallstone surgery, driven by long-standing inflammation, curable only by surgery and badly in need of screening biomarkers and separate study.

## Summary

Disease primer by authors from Chile, India, the United States and the US National Cancer Institute. Gallbladder cancer is the most common biliary tract cancer with a very poor prognosis at advanced stages; most cases are discovered incidentally after cholecystectomy for symptomatic stones, and chronic inflammation drives the disease whether or not stones are present. Omics studies have clarified inflammation-driven initiation and progression. Surgery is the only curative treatment and few cases are resectable; adjuvant therapy has low response rates. Unmet needs named: biomarkers for screening, therapy selection and prognosis; standardised nomenclature for preneoplastic lesions and specimen processing; and multidisciplinary care with neoadjuvant, adjuvant and novel systemic therapies including immunotherapy.

## Fields

- Kind: Key paper
- Last checked: 2026-09-24
- Tags: gallbladder-evidence
- Journal: Nature Reviews Disease Primers
- Year: 2022
- DOI: 10.1038/s41572-022-00398-y
- Authors: Roa JC, García P, Kapoor VK, et al.
- Findings: Most gallbladder cancers are discovered incidentally after cholecystectomy for symptomatic gallstones.; Named unmet needs: screening, selection and prognostic biomarkers; standardised lesion nomenclature and specimen sampling.
- What it means: The best single starting point for a clinician or researcher new to the disease, written by the groups running the Chilean and Indian cohorts; its list of unmet needs is the skeleton of the ideas section on this page.
- Caveats: Narrative review.; Published before the zanidatamab approvals and the TOPAZ-1 long-term update.

## Sources

- Nat Rev Dis Primers 2022: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41572-022-00398-y
- PubMed: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36302789/

## Connected records

- cancers: [Gallbladder cancer](https://onco.cc/cancers/gallbladder/), [Incidental gallbladder cancer (found after cholecystectomy)](https://onco.cc/cancers/incidental-gallbladder-cancer/)
- institutions: [National Cancer Institute (NIH)](https://onco.cc/institutions/nci/)
- terms: [Inflammation](https://onco.cc/terms/inflammation/)
- bottlenecks: [Rare and paediatric cancers without markets](https://onco.cc/bottlenecks/b-rare-cancers/), [The hardest cancers are found late](https://onco.cc/bottlenecks/b-early-detection/)
- roadmaps: [Gallbladder cancer roadmap: from a chance finding at gallstone surgery to a disease with its own trials](https://onco.cc/roadmaps/gallbladder-cancer-roadmap/)
- ideas: [A burden-to-funding audit for gallbladder cancer and a dedicated research call](https://onco.cc/ideas/idea-gbc-burden-to-funding-audit-and-dedicated-call/), [Risk-targeted ultrasound screening in high-incidence regions, tested against usual care](https://onco.cc/ideas/idea-gbc-risk-targeted-ultrasound-in-high-incidence-regions/)

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