
“I think it’s really important that people keep signing up to these type of trials to push research forward.”
This trial compared surgery and capecitabine with surgery alone for cancer of the bile duct or gallbladder (also called biliary tract cancer).
Cancer Research UK supported this trial.
This trial was open for people to join between March 2006 and December 2014. The results were published in 2019.
For biliary tract cancer diagnosed at an early stage, the best treatment is an operation to remove it. But sometimes the cancer starts to grow again after surgery.
Chemotherapy after surgery (adjuvant chemotherapy) can help stop some types of cancer from coming back.
Doctors thought a chemotherapy drug called capecitabine (Xeloda) might stop biliary tract cancer coming back after surgery. But they weren’t sure.
Capecitabine does have side effects, and it is important that people don’t have treatments they don’t need.
In this trial half the people had capecitabine after their surgery. And the other half didn’t have capecitabine.
The aim of this trial was to find out if capecitabine stopped cancer of the gall bladder or bile duct coming back after surgery.
Please note: In order to join a trial you will need to discuss it with your doctor, unless otherwise specified.
Professor John Primrose
Cancer Research UK
Experimental Cancer Medicine Centre (ECMC)
NIHR Clinical Research Network: Cancer
University of Southampton
Cancer Research UK Clinical Trials Unit, University of Birmingham
This is Cancer Research UK trial number CRUK/05/002.
If you have questions about the trial please contact our cancer information nurses
Freephone 0808 800 4040
“I think it’s really important that people keep signing up to these type of trials to push research forward.”