Gastrointestinal Cancer

Patients with advanced colorectal cancer had a modest gain in progression-free survival with the addition of irinotecan to standard chemotherapy plus an angiogenesis inhibitor as induction therapy, a randomized trial showed.

Geoffrey Y. Ku, MD, medical oncologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, discusses combinations of treatments for patients with gastric and esophageal cancers.

Kei Muro, MD, Aichi Cancer Center Hospital, discusses the results of the PaFF-K study in metastatic colorectal cancer.

Arturo Loaiza-Bonilla, MD, medical oncologist, the University of Pennsylvania, discusses a study investigating differences in mutation rates between right- and left-sided colorectal cancer.

In a single-arm phase II study, cabozantinib demonstrated clinical activity in patients with advanced carcinoid and pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors.

Ghassan K. Abou-Alfa, MD, medical oncologist, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, discusses ongoing studies investigating immunotherapy in hepatocellular carcinoma.

Patients in all age groups derived a survival benefit from treatment of advanced gastric or gastroesophageal juncture cancer with the monoclonal antibody ramucirumab, an analysis of 2 randomized trials showed.

Patients with advanced hepatocellular carcinoma had a worse survival following progression if they developed new extrahepatic lesions as opposed to other types of progression, supporting the concept of post-progression survival and the influence of different patterns of progression, according to an analysis of the phase III RESORCE trial.

Ian Chau, MD, consultant medical oncologist, Royal Marsden Hospital, discusses interim safety and clinical activity results in patients with advanced gastric or gastroesophageal junction adenocarcinoma from a multi-cohort phase I study of ramucirumab plus pembrolizumab.

Richard Finn, MD, associate professor of medicine at the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine, discusses the promise of regorafenib (Stivarga) for the treatment of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), as seen in the phase III RESORCE trial.

Results from a retrospective multicenter study suggest that continuing trastuzumab beyond progression may improve survival in patients with HER2-positive advanced gastric or gastroesophageal junction adenocarcinoma who progress on first-line trastuzumab plus platinum-based chemotherapy.

Surgical palliation in patients treated for malignant gastric outlet obstruction maintains quality of life and improves solid food intake for at least 3 months after surgery.

A combination regimen of pembrolizumab plus ramucirumab demonstrated modest activity in patients with previously treated gastric or gastroesophageal juncture cancer.

Treatment with nivolumab reduced the risk of death by 37% compared with placebo for patients with advanced gastric or gastroesophageal junction cancer following second or later-line chemotherapy.

Michael J. Overman, MD, medical oncologist, Department of Gastrointestinal Medical Oncology, Division of Cancer Medicine, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, discusses updated results from the CheckMate 142 trial, which investigated nivolumab (Opdivo) alone or in combination with ipilimumab (Yervoy) in patients with DNA mismatch repair deficient/microsatellite instability high (MSI-H) metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC).

Switching neoadjuvant chemotherapy regimens based on PET imaging after induction chemotherapy improved pathologic complete response rates in patients with esophageal and gastroesophageal junction cancers.

A watch-and-wait approach is emerging as a potential treatment strategy for patients with rectal cancer.

Patients with metastatic colorectal cancer who engaged in daily moderate physical activity demonstrated a reduction in mortality and cancer progression.

Jasmine Rassiwala, MD, resident physician, University of California, San Francisco, discusses the analysis of the “all-comers” downstaging protocol, which investigated whether there were upper limits in tumor burden for successful downstaging of patients with hepatocellular carcinoma to liver transplant.

Jordi Bruix, MD, head of the Barcelona Clinic Liver Cancer at University of Barcelona, discusses positive results with the use of regorafenib as a second-line treatment in patients previously treated with sorafenib in advanced hepatocellular carcinoma.

Activating, hotspot mutations in the NRAS gene occur in a small subset of patients with metastatic colorectal cancer. These mutations are now being identified in routine clinical practice by extended RAS genotyping.

Morris Sherman, MD, PhD, professor of Medicine at University of Toronto, discusses the emergence of regorafenib (Stivarga) and how it fits into the treatment of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC).

Filippo Pietrantonio, MD, Department of Medical Oncology, Medical Oncology Unit, Milan Fondazione IRCCS Istituto Nazionale dei Tumori, discusses survival rates in patients with colorectal cancer.

Francis Yao, MD, gastroenterologist and medical director of the Liver Transplant Program at the University of California San Francisco Medical Center, discusses liver transplants beyond Milan criteria for patients with liver cancer.

George N. Ioannou, MD, associate professor, VA Puget Sound Health Care System, University of Washington School of Medicine, discusses the best treatment options for patients with hepatocellular carcinoma.