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©The Author(s) 2025. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Clin Oncol. Oct 24, 2025; 16(10): 107875
Published online Oct 24, 2025. doi: 10.5306/wjco.v16.i10.107875
Published online Oct 24, 2025. doi: 10.5306/wjco.v16.i10.107875
Circulating tumor DNA in biliary tract cancers: A review of current applications
Maria Fernanda Teixeira, Pedro Luiz Serrano Uson Junior, Center for Personalized Medicine, Hospital Israelita Albert Einstein, Sao Paulo 05652000, Brazil
Mitesh Borad, Department of Oncology, Mayo Clinic, Phoenix, AZ 85054, United States
Author contributions: Teixeira MF, Borad M, and Uson Junior PLS wrote, reviewed, and approved the final manuscript.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.
Open Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Pedro Luiz Serrano Uson Junior, MD, Full Professor, Senior Research Fellow, Center for Personalized Medicine, Hospital Israelita Albert Einstein, 627/701 Av. Albert Einstein, Morumbi, Sao Paulo 05651901, Brazil. pedroluiz_uson@hotmail.com
Received: March 30, 2025
Revised: May 29, 2025
Accepted: September 4, 2025
Published online: October 24, 2025
Processing time: 208 Days and 11.6 Hours
Revised: May 29, 2025
Accepted: September 4, 2025
Published online: October 24, 2025
Processing time: 208 Days and 11.6 Hours
Core Tip
Core Tip: Molecular profiling of biliary tract cancers has significantly transformed the management of these diseases by paving the way for a broader range of therapeutic options, leading to improved survival outcomes. Given the scarcity of tissue, circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) has emerged as a promising non-invasive biomarker for genomic profiling, with high concordance with genomic alterations identified in tissue, particularly in therapy-naïve and metastasis-derived samples. Furthermore, ctDNA has a strong prognostic association and is an effective strategy for monitoring patients during systemic treatment.