For perihilar cholangiocarcinoma, radical surgical treatment, such as major hepatectomy combined with total caudate lobe and extrahepatic bile duct resection, remain the potential modality for cure. However, the lymph node tumor metastasis is an independent risk factor for prognosis after radical resection for this disease without distant metastasis. As reported by Nagoya University, Japan, the patients without lymph node tumor metastasis, the 5-year survival rate could reach as high as 67.1% after R0 resection, but the 5-year survival rate was only 22.1% for the patients with lymph node tumor metastasis after R0 resection. Thus, it is urgent to look for an effective adjuvant therapy treatment for these patients with lymph node tumor metastasis. Fluoropyrimidine-based or gemcitabine-based chemotherapy was recommended for these patients by NCCN guidelines. Studies have shown that Gemox chemotherapy (oxaliplatin + gemcitabine) in patients with resected biliary tract cancer has a good benefit in overall survival. However, for extrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma with lymph nodes metastasis, the benefit was limited. In recent years, immunotherapy, such as PD-1 or PD-L1 monoclonal antibody, combined with chemotherapy have shown better results in the palliative treatment of un-resectable biliary tract tumor. However, there is no report on combined immunotherapy with chemotherapy as adjuvant therapy in perihilar cholangiocarcinoma with lymph node tumor metastasis after R0 resection.
This is an open-label,single center,non-randomized,single arm exploratory study. The objective of this study is to evaluate the efficacy and safety of PD-1 antibody plus GEMOX as postoperative adjuvant therapy in perihilar cholangiocarcinoma with positively metastatic lymph nodes.