Intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma (ICC) is a malignant tumor of biliary epithelial cells that originates from the branches of the intrahepatic bile duct at the second level and above. Its incidence accounts for about 15%-20% of primary liver malignancies, showing a gradually increasing trend. Surgical resection is currently the main method for the treatment of ICC. The data of a large number of ICC cases show that even radical resection (R0) patients have an average survival of only 18.3 months, while for palliative resection patients, the average survival is only 6.6 months, and laparotomy patients only 5.6 months. Retrospective studies reported that positive resection margins, lymph node metastasis, lymphatic vessel invasion, nerve bundle invasion, preoperative CA199>200U/ml, multiple tumor nodules, and differentiation are the main factors affecting the survival of ICC patients after surgery. How to improve the surgical results of ICC patients, especially those with high-risk factors for postoperative recurrence, is an important way to improve the overall survival of ICC. Neoadjuvant therapy refers to some treatments taken before surgery for newly treated tumor patients who have not found distant metastasis, including chemotherapy, radiotherapy, targeted therapy, etc., to reduce tumors, reduce tumor stages, and reduce postoperative recurrence rate, prolonging survival time. Our previous study using Toripalimab combined with Lenvatinib and Gemox chemotherapy in the first-line treatment of unresectable advanced cholangiocarcinoma (NCT03951597,2020ESMO) showed that the ORR was 80% and the DCR reached 93.3%, of which 1 case was CR, 23 cases were PR, and 2 cases were successfully treated with radical resection after downstage. And the adverse reactions are controllable. These data suggest that Toripalimab combined with Lenvatinib and Gemox chemotherapy may be an ideal neoadjuvant treatment for patients with resectable intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma with high-risk recurrence factors, needing more investigation.
A randomized controlled, multi-center, open, phase II clinical study is designed to target patients with resectable intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma with high-risk recurrence factors which has extremely low postoperative recurrence-free survival. In this study, we aim to compare the prognosis in intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma between Toripalimab combined with Lenvatinib and GEMOX neoadjuvant treatment and the current clinical surgical treatment (traditional group).