Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium (ASCO GI)

Treatment with LY2157299 led to significant reductions in a prespecified biomarker that correlated with increased time to progression and overall survival in patients with advanced hepatocellular carcinoma.

Add-on treatment with the hedgehog pathway inhibitor vismodegib demonstrated encouraging activity in patients with untreated metastatic pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma.

Ramesh K. Ramanathan, MD, discusses the potential of identifying actionable targets in appendiceal cancers.

John L. Marshall, MD, from Georgetown University Hospital, on the recent advancements in colorectal cancer.

Robert L. Fine, MD, from the Columbia University Medical Center, discusses the prospective phase II study of CAPTEM for patients with neuroendocrine tumors.

Smitha Krishnamurthi, MD, discusses the results of the RAINBOW TRIAL

Data from an interim analysis of an ongoing phase II study suggest that patients with carcinoid and pituitary NETs, who have been traditionally chemo-resistant, may obtain "extraordinary responses" with capecitabine and temozolomide.

Single-agent neoadjuvant capecitabine combined with radiation therapy demonstrated similar outcomes as previously established standards of care for patients with stage II or stage III rectal cancer.

The combination of ramucirumab and paclitaxel resulted in a significant prolongation in survival and gains in quality of life when compared to paclitaxel alone for the second-line treatment of patients with metastatic gastric cancer.

An analysis of phase III, second-line data has shown that RAS mutations beyond KRAS exon 2 are negative predictive biomarkers for the EGFR-inhibitor panitumumab in metastatic colorectal cancer.

The incidence of adverse effects with regorafenib in metastatic colorectal cancer is highest during the first treatment cycle and then diminishes over time.

Capecitabine produces similar local disease control with lower toxicity versus gemcitabine when combined with radiotherapy following induction chemotherapy in patients with locally advanced pancreatic cancer.

FOLFOXIRI plus bevacizumab improved progression-free survival and response rates with a modest increase in side effects compared with FOLFIRI plus bevacizumab in patients with unresectable metastatic colorectal cancer.

Complete neoadjuvant treatment may represent a well-tolerated alternative to the current standard treatment sequence of adjuvant chemotherapy following chemoradiation and surgery.

James C. Yao, MD, from the MD Anderson Cancer Center, describes the administration of the mTOR inhibitor everolimus in patients with pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors.

Paul Ruff, MD, from the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa, discusses a time-course analysis of overall survival following treatment with ziv-aflibercept in patients with metastatic colorectal cancer, as observed in the VELOUR trial.

Richard Kim, MD, medical oncologist, Gastrointestinal Oncology Department at Moffitt Cancer Center, discusses studies investigating regorafenib (Stivarga) in metastatic colorectal cancer.

Katsuhiko Uesaka, MD, PhD, from the Shizuoka Cancer Center Hospital in Japan, discusses the JASPAC-01 study that compared gemcitabine to S-1 in Asian patients with resected pancreatic cancer.

Hugo Ford, MD, from the Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge, UK, describes results from the phase III COUGAR-02 study that examined second-line docetaxel in patients with advanced gastroesophageal adenocarcinoma.

Ghassan K. Abou-Alfa, MD, from Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, discusses a study that examined the utility of doxorubicin-eluting beads in hepatic arterial embolization as a treatment for hepatocellular carcinoma.

The 2013 Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium was held at the Moscone West Building, San Francisco, CA, from January 24-26.

Adding nab-paclitaxel to gemcitabine improves survival compared with gemcitabine alone in patients with metastatic pancreatic cancer.

Ramucirumab significantly extended overall survival as a second-line agent in patients with metastatic gastric or gastroesophageal junction adenocarcinoma that progressed on first-line therapy.

Patients with metastatic colorectal cancer whose disease had progressed despite treatment with oxaliplatin experienced an improvement in survival by switching to a regimen of ziv-aflibercept plus FOLFIRI.

Axel Grothey, MD, from the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota, discusses the time course of adverse events following treatment with regorafenib, as observed in the CORRECT study.

Adjuvant chemotherapy with the oral fluoropyrimidine S-1 improved survival versus standard postoperative gemcitabine in Asian patients with pancreatic cancer, according to an interim analysis from a phase III trial conducted in Japan.

Ramesh K. Ramanathan, MD, from the Virginia G. Piper Cancer Center, discusses the phase III MPACT study that examined gemcitabine plus nab-paclitaxel in patients with metastatic adenocarcinoma of the pancreas.

William M. Grady, MD, from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, discusses results from a study that examined the association of intrinsic subtypes of colorectal cancer with prognosis, chemotherapy response, and other factors.