GI Cancers Symposium

San Francisco, CA—Gene-expression profiling (GEP) of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) may help to personalize chemotherapy for patients with pancreatic cancer by predicting how patients will respond to certain treatments, according to a study reported at the 2013 Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium.
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The preferred screening test for human epidermal growth factor receptor (HER)2 status in surgical esophageal adenocarcinoma specimens is immunohistochemistry (IHC), with fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) restricted to cases with an indeterminate (2+) IHC score, according to investigators from the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN, who proposed a testing algorithm at the 2013 Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium.
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San Francisco, CA—Genomic classifiers—in particular, ColoPrint and MSI-Print, best when combined—can identify high-risk subsets among patients with surgically resected stage II and stage III colon cancers, reported researchers from M.D. Anderson Cancer Center at the 2013 Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium.
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San Francisco, CA—Ramucirumab as a second-line therapy extended overall and progression-free survival in a phase 3 clinical trial of patients with metastatic gastric cancer, said Charles S. Fuchs, MD, MPH, Director of the Center for Gastrointestinal Cancer at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, and Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, at the 2013 Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium.
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San Francisco, CA—A randomized phase 2 study that compared panitu­mumab (Vectibix) and bevacizumab (Avastin) in the first-line treatment of metastatic colorectal cancer (CRC) showed these drugs to be similar in terms of progression-free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS) benefits.
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When added to gemcitabine, weekly nab-paclitaxel improved survival in patients with advanced pancreatic cancer by nearly 2 months compared with gemcitabine alone, said Daniel D. Von Hoff, MD, FACP, Physician in Chief and Director of Translational Research, Translational Genomics Research Institute, Phoenix, regarding the results of a large international phase 3 clinical trial.
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San Francisco, CA—A serum-based enzyme immunoassay using the PAM4 antibody, combined with the serum marker CA19-9, detected stage I pancreatic cancer in nearly two thirds of patients analyzed in a study presented at the 2012 Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium.
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San Francisco, CA—The novel tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI) regorafenib, used as a single agent to treat treatment-refractory metastatic colorectal cancer (CRC), significantly improved survival and delayed disease progression in an international phase 3 trial presented at the 2012 Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium.
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>San Francisco, CA—The “eradication” of colorectal cancer (CRC) may be a step closer, based on promising data for stool DNA testing, said David A. Ahlquist, MD, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN, at the 2012 Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium.
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San Francisco, CA—Approximately 80% of patients with stage II colon cancer will be cured by surgery alone, but 20% will still relapse. Oncologists struggle with the question of which patients could benefit from adjuvant chemotherapy to reduce this risk, and which patients can be safely observed, without further treatment.
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