Farshid Dayyani, MD, PhD shared his key takeaways on emerging developments in gastrointestinal oncology at ASCO 2026.
One study showcased promising new data, including bispecific antibodies achieving 80% response rates in gastric cancer. In hepatocellular carcinoma, phase three trial results reinforced dual immune checkpoint inhibition followed by local-regional consolidation, demonstrating clear progression-free survival benefits. For neuroendocrine carcinoma, an antibody-drug conjugate targeting BCL-3 showed transformative 55–60% response rates in patients with high expression levels.
Dayyani also shared findings from his poster presentation highlighting suboptimal HER2 testing rates despite available targeted therapies, underscoring the need for improved biomarker profiling adoption across clinical practice.
I'm just coming from the upper GI oral abstract session which I think was one of the most important at this year for us, uh, GI oncologists. Um, I think the data presented show us that the future is bright for our patients and what really excited me is, uh, proof of principle. Concepts with trials that we already have with compounds that we have at UCI showed uh exceedingly good outcomes and and we're really excited that we have those trials at UCI. So, uh, with the focus on gastric cancer, which is one of my, my uh Areas of special interest we saw that by specific antibodies we called in it 182 and CD3 and we have uh uh ongoing trials with the with the that compound showed very, very high response rates and Well, the new compound that they presented from China, even without the addition of immunotherapy showed 80% response rate of gastric cancer, which is unheard of. So now the question is what happens if you add an anti-PD1. Uh, fortunately I was able to connect with the company and we're looking forward to bringing that trial soon to our patients at UCI and, uh, we expect great things about it. In, in terms of liver cancer. I think our approach at UCI of combining a tablet or dual immunotherapy combination with tremulumumab and revalumab in liver-limited unresectable 8CC was reinforced by the randomized phase 3 MRL 3 trial where clearly the uh Addition of uh this so-called stride regimen to a case procedure uh improve um progression free survival, but also I think meaningfully maybe not uh statistically significant yet because of immature data but even overall survival. So I think that sort of Re-emphasize what we have been doing at UCI for a while already for these patients to stimulate the immune system with a double immune checkpoint inhibitor blockade and then uh consolidate the tumors with uh local regional treatment with TCE or radioembolization for patients who get a bit more rare disease, uh, but highly aggressive disease, so-called neuroendocrine carcinomas, high unmet need, not as good as a lot of trials or good treatment options. And I think BLL 3 is being validated as a legitimate target. We saw a presentation with the antibody drug conjugate against DLL3, especially for patients with expression of 50% or higher. Uh, the response rate was about 55 to 60% with a very long duration of response. So really I think that's transformative. And again we have, uh, uh, investigating ship trial open together with you. Out of UCLA with DLL-3 targeting agents in neuroendrophin carcinoma. So really what excited me is that we are on the right track at UCI. Uh, we have access to the right compounds, to the right combinations, and really I think what we have been offering our patients over the past two years in our trial portfolio reflects really the future of upper GI cancers. Um, in terms of our own work presented here, we had multiple. And abstracts, uh, presented as poster, uh. The, the main one where I was the first author was describing the real-world treatment patterns and testing patterns in biliaryran cancer with HER2 education to inform uh treatment decisions. And for those, first we need to understand um how, how are these patients treated today. One of the main uh takeaways from that poster was That actually patients are not being tested for HER2 as much as they should despite having now very efficacious therapies, uh, well tolerated. We are not testing enough HER2. Again, not that UCI. I think everybody gets biomarker testing, but I think it sends a Message out to say it's of uttermost importance to do molecular profiling on your patients with biliary tract cancer because we have a host of targeted therapies including Hercule ramplification and overexpression that will significantly improve the outcomes. So, uh we're looking forward to going back and implementing a lot of this uh tomorrow in our clinic for our patients.
