Host:

Donna Mayer, Executive Director, Cholangiocarcinoma Foundation

Topic:
Surgical Management of Cholangiocarcinoma State of the Art and Beyond
Date:
Date: Thursday, November 13, 2014
Time: 3:00 PM (Eastern)
Presenters:
Tomoaki Kato, M.D., Chief of the Division of Abdominal Organ
Transplantation, NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University
Medical Center, New York, NY
Bio:

Dr. Tomoaki Kato

Dr. Tomoaki Kato is a renowned expert in liver and intestinal transplantation
and complex abdominal and hepatobiliary surgeries. Since 2010, Dr. Kato
has served as Chief of the Division of Abdominal Organ Transplantation at
NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center. He has
been leading the institutions liver transplant program, using both deceased
and living donor livers.
Dr. Kato is known for unique and innovative surgeries for adults and children,
including a six-organ transplant; a procedure called APOLT (auxiliary partial
orthotopic liver transplantation) that resuscitates a failing liver by attaching
a partial donor liver, making immunosuppressant drugs unnecessary; and
the first successful human partial bladder transplantation involving the
transplant of two kidneys together with ureters connected to a patch of the
donor bladder. In a highly publicized case, he led the first reported removal
and re-implantation, or auto-transplantation, of six organs to excise a hardto-reach abdominal tumor. Previously the director of pediatric liver and
gastrointestinal transplant and professor of clinical surgery at the School of
Medicine in the University of Miami, Dr. Kato received his medical degree

from the Osaka University Medical School in Japan and received his
residency training in surgery at Osaka University Hospital and Itami City
Hospital in Hyogo, Japan. He completed a clinical fellowship in
transplantation at the University of Miami/Jackson Memorial Hospital, in
Miami, Florida, where he was subsequently appointed to the surgical faculty
in 1997, and promoted to full professor in 2007. He served as a surgeon and
senior leader of the liver and transplantation center at Miami's Jackson
Memorial Hospital, beginning in 1997, and at University of Miami Hospital
(previously Cedars Medical Center), beginning in 2004.
This session will focus on current techniques being used for surgical
management of cholangiocarcinoma and the promise of potential
treatments for patients in the future.
There will be time for Q&A.
Quick Cholangiocarcinoma Facts:
Of the 580,000 Americans diagnosed with cancer every year, 2,500 of those
cases are Cholangiocarcinoma. There is only a 30 per cent chance of a fiveyear survival rate if the cancer is found early stage, and the cause is still
unknown. This disease can hit at any age, but typically occurs in patients
over 65 years old. Bile seeps back into the blood causing the patients skin
and whites of their eyes to become yellow. Other symptoms include
abdominal pain, high temperatures and weight loss.
What:
Scientists and doctors have taken an important step forward in a new cancer
treatment. The therapy can apply to a wide array of cancers especially
patients who have been diagnosed with melanomas in the lungs, bladder
and gastrointestinal tract.
A study recently published by the National Cancer Institute, under the
National Institutes of Health, doctors sequenced the genome of a 43-yearold woman named Melinda Bachini, who had been struggling a cancer that

wasnt responding to chemotherapy. According to the Times Dr. Steven A.

Rosenberg and his colleagues preformed adopted cell therapy, on the
patient which involves identified cells from her immune system that
attacked a specific mutation in the malignant cells. Then they grew those
immune cells in the laboratory and infused billions of them back into her
bloodstream. Through this process the tumors started to melt
away. Rosenberg told NBC News Its the first time we have been able to
actually target a specific mutation in the immune system,
Why:
This womans cancer is not cured. While her tumors are shrinking, they are
not gone. But this report shows an approach that can be applied to most
common tumors, which cause more than 80% of the 580,000 cancer deaths
in the United States every year. This is a great breakthrough in science.
Rosenberg will discuss the techniques used in hopes to continue to find the
cure. Because of this study scientist may one day use modifies E.coli to
develop custom drugs, antibiotics, and vaccines that were never possible
before.