Gastrointestinal Cancer

Margaret A. Tempero, MD, director, Pancreas Center, University of California, San Francisco, discusses the HALO 301 trial, which is exploring the addition of PEGPH20 to gemcitabine and albumin-bound paclitaxel as a potential treatment for patients with pancreatic adenocarcinoma.

Matthew B. Yurgelun, MD, Targeted Oncology, Yurgelun, Instructor in Medicine, Harvard Medical School, discusses a recent study which uncovered BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutations as possible risk markers for colorectal cancer.

Philip B. Paty, MD, surgeon, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, discusses the high-risk period for rectal tumor regrowth in patients.

Tanios Bekaii-Saab, MD, professor of Medicine, Mayo Clinic, discusses regorafenib and TAS-102. In colorectal cancer.

Richard S. Finn, MD, associate professor of Medicine at the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine, discusses both recent advances in the treatment of patients with liver cancer, as well as the future role that immunotherapy stands to have in this field.

Tanios Bekaii-Saab, MD, professor of Medicine, Mayo Clinic, discusses microsatellite instability in colorectal cancer.

Anthony B. El-Khoueiry, MD, associate professor of Clinical Medicine, USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center, discusses the rationale for evaluating nivolumab in advanced hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC).

Ju Dong Yang, MD, MSc, discusses patients with nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH)-associated hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) who present without cirrhosis at the time of diagnosis of liver cancer.

A new generation of drugs has proved highly effective against the hepatitis C virus but there is conflicting evidence about whether the therapies promote cancer recurrence in infected patients with hepatocellular carcinoma who already have responded to curative treatment.

Ghassan K. Abou-Alfa, MD, discusses research into the use of the immunotherapeutic vaccinia virus Pexa-Vec as a frontline treatment for advanced hepatocellular carcinoma.

Two competing methods of delivering locoregional therapy to patients with hepatocellular carcinoma both have advantages and may be most successful in subgroups of individuals with intermediate-stage disease.

Richard Kinh Gian Do, MD, PhD, radiologist, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, discusses the assessment of tumor response in liver cancer.

Francis Yao, MD, professor of Clinical Medicine and Surgery, medical director of the Liver Transplant Program at UCSF Medical Center, discusses the Milan criteria in liver cancer.

About one quarter of patients with nonalcoholic steatohepatitis-associated hepatocellular carcinoma present without cirrhosis at diagnosis, suggesting a crucial subset of patients for future research with implications for HCC screening and surveillance.

Nivolumab continues to post durable responses in patients with advanced hepatocellular carcinoma regardless of whether they had hepatitis B or C or whether they had received prior treatment with sorafenib.

After 9 years of failed trials for once-promising drugs, regorafenib (Stivarga) has emerged as the clear choice for second-line therapy in advanced hepatocellular carcinoma after demonstrating survival improvements for patients whose disease has progressed after systemic treatment.

Richard S. Finn, MD, an associate professor of Medicine at the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine, discusses the challenges with determing a biomarker for patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) in an interview during the 10th Annual Conference of the International Liver Cancer Association (ILCA) in Vancouver, Canada. Finn is the current ILCA president.

Morris Sherman, MD, PhD, professor of Medicine at University of Toronto, discusses the issues oncologists face with screening patients for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) in an interview during the 10th International Liver Cancer Association (ILCA) Annual Conference.

Although regorafenib is not currently approved, Morris Sherman, MD, PhD, already views the agent as the standard second-line therapy, with hopes for moving the agent into the frontline setting.

Early evidence suggests that the combination of locoregional therapy with an immune checkpoint inhibitor is a safe and effective strategy to pursue for patients with advanced hepatocellular carcinoma.

Andrew X. Zhu, MD, PhD, professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School, director of Liver Cancer Research, Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital, discusses the possibility of an optimal second-line treatment for all patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC).

Klaus Hoeflich, PhD, director of Biology, Blueprint Medicines, discusses diagnosis of liver cancer as well as the treatment challenges associated with the disease during the 10th Annual Conference of the International Liver Cancer Association in Vancouver, Canada.

Although it has been nearly 10 years since a new drug was approved for the treatment of patients with hepatocellular carcinoma, the past decade has been marked by advances on the scientific and radiology fronts and the prospects for the development of new therapies are bright.

An assay that would evaluate the immune status of patients with colon cancer is poised to become the first of a series of Immunoscore tests for various tumor types.

Obesity is more prevalent in cancer survivors, specifically in those with a history of breast or colorectal cancer, compared with those without any history of disease.