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Hepatic and Digestive Oncology
Coordinator: Bruno Sangro Gómez-Acebo
Clinical-scienti c relevance of the subjects in the programme
Cancer is one of the rst causes of death of the general public Both colorectal and hepatic cancer are among the three most commonly-found cancers, while gastric, oesophageal or pancreatic cancer have less prevalence, but mean a high healthcare burden
As a whole, hepatic and gastrointestinal cancer is one of the most frequent causes of death in the adult population It should thus be considered a health problem of the rst degree, and furthering research plans connected with cancer must be seen as a priority
Current situation of research into liver and gastrointestinal cancer
Knowledge of the reasons and mechanisms giving rise to the appearance of cancer and its progression to more aggressive forms of the disease is the basis for the reduction in mortality from cancer that we have been observing in the last ve decades This in-depth knowledge is being acquired through the co- ordinated activity of specialists focussing on partial aspects of the problem: molecular biology, genetics or immunology, epidemiology, and clinical intervention
This last aspect proves vital for allowing biological knowledge to entail progress in healthcare and for what is known as Precision Medicine to become a reality Over the last few years it has been detected that the failure to apply certain strategies of diagnosis, prevention or treatment of liver and digestive tract cancer may be due to the insu cient attention given to the representativeness of the human sam- ples analysed in the preclinical studies and the limited information that can be obtained from cell or animal models
Recent progress
Thanks to the cooperation of groups and researchers with di erent elds of knowledge there have been some interesting steps forward in this eld The stages de ning the transition of preneoplastic lesions to cancer in situ and nally established cancer in oesophageal, colorectal and hepatic cancer have been characterised The demarcation of the correlation between phenotypic pattern and molecular anomalies has been started
Progress has been made in obtaining markers which enable perfecting the diagnosis of the two main varieties of liver cancer by non-invasive methods Advances have also been made in learning the per- formance of markers of hereditary risk to develop digestive cancer enabling identifying individuals at risk for them to take part in follow-up plans enabling detecting the disease in earlier stages in which potentially curative treatment can be applied
From the therapeutic standpoint, there has also been progress in the improvement of certain advanced endoscopic procedures for treatment of pancreatic and digestive tract cancer, as well as intra-arterial procedures for treatment of hepatic cancer The groups in this programme have furthermore helped to de ne the therapeutic utility of new drugs in hepatic cancer and to generate hypotheses on new mo- lecular targets for identi cation of drugs whose development is to be completed in the coming years
72 CIBER ANNUAL REPORT 2017