ReviewBritish journal of cancer2025
Cancer of unknown primary: the hunt for its elusive tissue-of-origin - is it time to call off the search?
Review in British journal of cancer, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 10 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
10 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- SEOM-GECOD clinical guideline for cancer of unknown primary (update 2025).Clinical & translational oncology : official publication of the Federation of Spanish Oncology Societies and of the National Cancer Institute of Mexico · 2026Guideline
- Establishment and functional characterization of an EGFR-amplified tumoroid from squamous cell carcinoma of unknown primary.Human cell · 2026Article
- Integrating artificial intelligence into cancers of unknown primary diagnosis and treatment.iScience · 2026Review
- Diagnosing carcinoma origin in ultrasound-guided needle biopsies: a context-driven approach anchored in site-specific immunohistochemical markers.Diagnostic pathology · 2026Article
- Nutritional indices are potentially important prognostic biomarkers before chemotherapy for non-specific subsets of cancer of unknown primary origin.Molecular and clinical oncology · 2026Article
- An Audit of Accessibility and Actionability of Molecular Profiling for Patients with Cancer of Unknown Primary at a Tertiary Care Centre.Clinics and practice · 2026Article
- Molecular-Guided Precision Oncology in Cancer of Unknown Primary: A State-of-the-Art Perspective.Journal of personalized medicine · 2026Review
- SMARCB1 (INI-1)-deficient carcinoma with eosinophilia and cervical lymph node metastasis of unknown primary: a case report and literature review.Frontiers in oncology · 2026Article
- Anatomically Precise Microsurgical Resection of a Posterior Fossa Cerebellar Metastasis in an Elderly Patient with Preservation of Venous Outflow, Dentate Nucleus, and Cerebrospinal Fluid Pathways.Diagnostics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Prognostic Values of the Systemic Immune Inflammation Index and Ferritin Level Combined with Pathological Indicators for the Patients with Colon Cancer After Radical Resection.Journal of inflammation research · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Cancer of Unknown Primary (CUP) is an heterogenous group of metastatic cancers, for which the primary site cannot be identified despite thorough diagnostic work-up. Whilst it is a relatively rare entity, its aggressive nature, together with the paucity of effective treatments, mean it has a disproportionately high mortality rate. Advances in genomic profiling have driven research in the area, but despite this, therapeutic options and prognosis remain poor. For many years, the primary focus in CUP has been improving identification of the tissue-of-origin (TOO), with the hope that site-specific therapy will improve survival outcomes. However, the lack of conclusive evidence to support this, as well as an emerging paradigm shift in how cancers should be classified, has reignited the debate surrounding the importance of TOO. Here, we provide a comprehensive review of the ongoing relevance of TOO, within both the CUP and wider oncology landscape.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.