Gastrointestinal Cancer

Five randomized trials involving patients with locally advanced pancreatic cancer illustrate most clearly the substantial degree to which standard therapies are limited in their effectiveness.

For resectable gastric cancer, perioperative chemotherapy or adjuvant chemoradiation with chemotherapy are standards of care. The decision making for adjuvant therapeutic management can depend on the stage of the cancer, lymph node positivity, and extent of surgical resection.

A new scoring system may help to identify patients at low risk for colorectal cancer who could forego screening with colonoscopy.

Long-term results of the CROSS study have confirmed that neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy added to surgery should be the standard of care in esophageal or esophagogastric junction carcinoma.

Patients diagnosed with colorectal cancer at younger ages are more likely to have an underlying hereditary syndrome than older patients, according to a new study.

The use of BEAMing technology on circulating DNA to identify multiple mutations in real time could help guide treatment in colorectal cancer patients.

Our future goal should be to increase the resectability of patients with colorectal cancer and peritoneal metastases by improving selection criteria and by referring early, but also by using systemic therapies in the neoadjuvant setting.

This review focuses on the underlying rationale for the use of cytoreductive surgery plus hyperthermic intraperitoneal chemotherapy (CS + HIPEC) in the treatment of patients with primary gastrointestinal tumors with metastatic peritoneal disease.

It is clear that in a subset of patients with GI malignancies, particularly the low-grade appendiceal neoplasms, CS + HIPEC can result in improved outcomes and in some cases, long-term remission and occasionally cure.

Though the United States has seen a decrease in death rates from colorectal cancer, three regions, or "hotspots," continue to experience high rates.

Treatment with FOLFOX plus cetuximab resulted in improved PFS vs FOLFOX alone in patients with metastatic colorectal cancer with “all-RAS” wild-type tumors.

A subgroup analysis of the phase III RECOURSE trial has shown that TAS-102 is effective at improving survival in patients with both KRAS wild-type or mutant metastatic colorectal cancer.

Two phase III trials have confirmed the benefit of regorafenib, an oral multikinase inhibitor, in patients with previously treated metastatic colorectal cancer.

Large proportions of lung and colorectal cancer patients believe that surgery will cure their cancer, according to results of a new population-based study.

Adding the oral NK1 antagonist aprepitant to an oxaliplatin-based chemotherapy regimen effectively reduced nausea and vomiting in colorectal cancer patients.

A new study has found that in patients diagnosed with metastatic colorectal cancer, a low BMI could be a poor prognostic factor.

The FDA has granted a priority review for MM-398 as a second-line treatment for metastatic pancreatic cancer after the drug demonstrated improved survival.

Ahead of the ESMO World Congress on Gastrointestinal Cancer, we are discussing the use of maintenance therapy in metastatic colorectal cancer with Axel Grothey, MD.

Researchers have discovered a protein encoded by the GPC1 gene present on cancer exomes that may be used as a diagnostic tool to detect early pancreatic cancer.

Patients with treatment-naive metastatic pancreatic cancer assigned to treatment with gemcitabine plus rigosertib did not have any improvement in tumor response or survival compared with treatment with gemcitabine alone.

The presence of an abdominal blood clot may be a sign of cancer and may also be associated with poor survival for patients with pancreatic or liver cancers.

In this video, Dr. El-Khoueiry discusses results from a phase I/II study that suggest the PD-1 inhibitor nivolumab is safe and effective in advanced hepatocellular carcinoma.

In this video, Dr. Atsushi Ohtsu discusses the use of TAS-102, an oral combination of trifluridine and tipiracil hydrochloride, in refractory colorectal cancer.

Aspirin use after a colorectal cancer diagnosis was independently associated with improved rates of both cancer-specific and overall survival.

Treating patients with unresectable colorectal liver metastases with radiofrequency ablation and chemotherapy resulted in improved long-term overall survival.

Neoadjuvant mFOLFOX6 plus radiation improved pathologic complete response in advanced rectal cancer patients compared with 5-FU/radiation or mFOLFOX6 alone.

In this video, Dung T. Le, MD, discusses a phase II study that found that mismatch repair–deficient colorectal tumors were highly responsive to checkpoint blockade with the anti–PD-1 drug pembrolizumab.

Increased levels of vitamin D were associated with improved overall survival rates in metastatic colorectal cancer patients treated as part of CALGB/SWOG 80405.

Results from a phase I/II study suggest that the immunotherapy nivolumab is safe and effective in advanced hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC).

Aflatoxin, a naturally occurring toxin produced by certain types of molds, has been found to be associated with an increased risk of gallbladder cancer.