Cholangiocarcinoma represents the second most common primary hepatobiliary cancer. Although few patients are candidates for surgery, surgical resection represents the only potential curative option. The prognosis for patients remains poor, despite advances in the understanding of mechanisms involved in carcinogenesis. This review aims to assess clinicopathological factors and biological markers for the ability to predict prognosis. Clinicopathologic factors most often cited are tumor size, lymph node involvement, resecability and surgical margins involvement. Molecular biomarkers have been examined and a number of these, including mdm2, p27, matrix metalloproteinases and vitamin D receptor appear to have prognostic utility. The advent of 'omic'-based profiling offers the potential to assess many different biomarkers at the same time. This 'protein/gene signature' could open the way for developing valid and reproducible predictors of survival based on protein or gene profiles.
