To assess the potential of the markers for early diagnosis of BTC, assays for TBIL, ALP, GGT, CRP, CA19-9, LRG1, IL6 and PKM2 were conducted on a set of 89 pre-diagnosis serum samples taken from 55 cases of BTC and 91 matched cancer-free controls identified from the UKCTOCS biobank (Table 2). The gene discussed is IL6; the disease is cancer.