ESMO Gastrointestinal Cancers Congress

Eileen M. O’Reilly, MD, associate director for Clinical Research, David M. Rubenstein Center for Pancreatic Cancer Research at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, discusses factors that patients and oncologists should consider when developing a treatment plan for pancreatic cancer.

Daniel Sargent, PhD, professor of Oncology and Biostatistics, Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, discusses the IDEA initiative, which is an international study to examine if patients with colon cancer would benefit from reducing the duration of adjuvant therapy from 3 months to 6 months to reduce side effects and cost.

Adding MM-398 (irinotecan liposome injection; nal-IRI; Onivyde) to 5-fluorouracil and leucovorin had no negative effect on quality of life while significantly improving overall survival in patients with metastatic pancreatic cancer.

John L. Marshall, MD, chief, Division Of Hematology/Oncology, Georgetown University Hospital Associate Director, clinical research, Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center at Georgetown University Hospital, discusses the difference between squamous and adenocarcinoma in esophageal and gastric cancer.

Combined inhibition of the PD-L1/PD-1 axis with atezolizumab (Tecentriq) and the MEK pathway with cobimetinib (Cotellic) showed promising clinical activity and a good safety profile in heavily pretreated patients with microsatellite stable metastatic colorectal cancer.

Second-line treatment with regorafenib (Stivarga) improved overall survival by 2.8 months compared with placebo for patients with unresectable hepatocellular carcinoma who progressed on sorafenib (Nexavar).

Axel Grothey, MD, department of Oncology, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN, discusses the differences between the CORRECT and CONCUR trials, which both looked at regorafenib for previously treated metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC).

Yung-Jue Bang, MD, PhD, discusses pembrolizumab for the treatment of advanced gastric cancer. Pembrolizumab was investigated as part of the KEYNOTE-012 study, which looked at the checkpoint inhibitor across several solid tumors.

Guillem Argilés, MD, department of Medical Oncology, Vall d'Hebron University Hospital, discusses the benefits of molecular subtyping in colorectal cancer.

Vincent Vandecaveye, MD, PhD, University Hospitals Leuven, discusses developments of magnetic resonance imaging, specifically diffusion MRI, as a method to differentiate tumors and disease stages.

Michael Manns, MD, the Director of the Department of Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Endocrinology at the Medical School of Hannover in Germany, explains risk factors for hepatitis C-related hepatocellular carcinoma.

Patients with metastatic colorectal cancer benefited from treatment with cetuximab plus chemotherapy even after disease progression on a similar regimen as long as their tumors did not harbor mutations in any of four key genes.

Howard S. Hochster, MD, professor of Medicine and Associate Director for Clinical Sciences, Yale Cancer Center, discusses the potential of TAS-102 for colorectal cancer.

The survival benefit observed with regorafenib (Stivarga) over placebo in Asian patients who had been previously treated for metastatic colorectal cancer in the international phase III CORRECT trial was confirmed by the phase III CONCUR trial.

Lorenza Rimassa, MD, Deputy Director - Medical Oncology Unit - Humanitas Cancer Center, Humanitas Research Hospital, discusses a study looking at tivantinib (ARQ 197), a highly selective MET inhibitor, for the treatment of Metastatic Colorectal Cancer (mCRC).

Findings from a large expanded access program have confirmed the efficacy and safety of regorafenib in patients with previously treated metastatic colorectal cancer.

TAS-102 demonstrated similar improvements in overall survival and progression-free survival in patients with heavily pretreated colorectal cancer from the phase III RECOURSE trial stratified by KRAS mutational status.

Adding an NK1 antagonist to a 5-HT3 receptor antagonist with dexamethasone improved antiemetic control for patients with colorectal cancer treated with an oxaliplatin-based regimen compared with the 5-HT3 antagonist and dexamethasone alone.

Andrew Zhu, MD, PhD, Associate Professor, Medicine, Harvard Medical School Director, Liver Cancer Research, Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital, discusses the REACH study, which looks at ramucirumab in advanced hepatocellular carcinoma.

Josep Tabernero, MD, PhD, summarized novel agents that are currently under exploration for patients with gastric cancer.

Eric Van Cutsem, MD, PhD, of University Hospitals Gasthuisberg/Leuven, Leuven, Belgium, discusses the safety profile of the phase III B CONSIGN study, which looked at regorafenib in patients with previously treated metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC).

Novel agents that target the replication of the hepatitis C virus are poised to have a far-reaching impact on the prevention and recurrence of hepatocellular carcinoma and have shown the ability to reverse liver fibrosis, including cirrhosis in patients with end-stage HCC.

Investigators reported a clinically meaningful extension of overall survival with IMM-101 plus gemcitabine in patients with metastatic pancreatic cancer.

Dirk Arnold, MD, director of the Department of Medical Oncology at Klinik für Tumorbiologie, Freiburg, Germany, discusses the phase III Sirflox study, which looked at selective internal radiation therapy (SIRT) using Yttrium-90 (Y-90) resin microspheres for the treatment of metastatic colorectal cancer.

Philip Philip MD, PhD, professor of oncology at Karmanos Cancer Center, Wayne State University School of Medicine, discusses the use of the investigational drug evofosfamide for pancreatic cancer.

Andrew Hendifar, MD, MPH, Assistant Professor of Medicine at Cedars Sinai Medical Center and the David Geffen School of Medicine, discusses the use of a PEGylated form of rHuPH20 (PEGPH20) added to nab-paclitaxel/gemcitabine for pancreatic cancer patients with high levels of hyaluronan (HA).

Results from a pooled dataset of more than 6000 patients with metastatic colorectal cancer found an association between low body mass index and a worse median overall survival with first-line bevacizumab and chemotherapy, suggesting that low BMI could be a prognostic factor for worse outcomes.

S. Yousuf Zafar, MD, Associate Professor of Medicine at Duke Cancer Institute, discusses the potential link between low body mass index (BMI) and survival outcomes in metastatic colorectal cancer.