Study of Occupational Risk Factors for Biliary and Pancreatic Cancers

PANTOXBIL is a research project developed in the context of the increasing incidence of biliary tract and pancreatic cancers in France. Despite recent therapeutic advances, the prognosis of these cancers remains poor. Known risk factors do not fully explain the increase in incidence observed over recent decades. This suggests the possible role of emerging occupational and environmental risk factors, as reported in several epidemiological studies.

The PANTOXBIL study is based on the analysis of detailed curriculum laboris data (employment periods, occupations, tasks performed, and occupational exposures) collected during two multicenter phase II clinical trials, TEDOPAM and IMMUNOBIL, conducted between 2018 and 2021 in patients with pancreatic and biliary tract cancers.

An occupational exposure assessment was performed to calculate semi-quantitative cumulative exposure indices for each exposure or group of exposures for every participant. These indices will be compared with those of healthy controls from the CHOPPI cohort, initially designed to study occupational risk factors in COPD.

PANTOXBIL is a matched case-control study based on sex, age, and smoking status. The aim is to compare cumulative occupational exposure indices between cases and controls in order to generate new hypotheses regarding occupational risk factors for biliary tract and pancreatic cancers.