Small Bowel Adenocarcinoma: Etiology, Presentation, and Molecular Alterations

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Katrina S. PedersenDivision of Oncology, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, Missouri, and

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Kanwal RaghavDepartment of Gastrointestinal Medical Oncology, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas.

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Michael J. OvermanDepartment of Gastrointestinal Medical Oncology, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas.

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Small bowel adenocarcinoma (SBA) is a rare cancer that has been treated similarly to colorectal cancer (CRC) in the advanced setting. Incidence has been increasing as detection efforts have been improving for these challenging-to-diagnose tumors, but patients frequently experience prolonged nonspecific symptoms due to delayed diagnosis. As a result of such delays and likely due to variant biology, patient outcomes for SBA are inferior to those for CRC at all stages of diagnosis. Recent molecular studies highlight the genomic differences underpinning these tumors and suggest new future pathways for treatment, distinct from CRC.

Submitted June 6, 2019; accepted for publication August 6, 2019.

Disclosures: Dr. Pedersen has disclosed that she receives grant/research support from AbbVie and Merck, and consulting fees/honoraria from Array and BeiGene. The remaining authors have disclosed that they have no financial interests, arrangements, affiliations, or commercial interests with the manufacturers of any products discussed in this article or their competitors.

Correspondence: Katrina S. Pedersen, MD, MS, Division of Oncology, Washington University School of Medicine, 660 South Euclid Avenue, Campus Box 8056, St. Louis, MO 63110. Email: kpedersen@wustl.edu
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