ESMO Gastrointestinal Cancers Congress

Richard Goldberg, MD, Physician-in-Chief, Professor of Medicine, the Klotz Family Chair in Cancer Research, Associate Director of Outreach, Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer, James Cancer Hospital and Solove Research Institute, discusses immunotherapy treatment for colorectal cancer patients with Lynch syndrome.

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.

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.

Marwan G. Fakih, MD, professor, director, Gastrointestinal Medical Oncology, City of Hope, discusses recent advances in liver-directed therapies in colorectal cancer (CRC).

Dirk Arnold, MD, director, Department of Medical Oncology, Tumour Biology Centre, Freiburg, Germany, discusses a phase III trial looking at options for maintenance therapy for metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC).

Takayuki Yoshino, MD, medical oncologist, National Cancer Center Hospital East, Chiba, Japan, discusses the safety profile of TAS-102 as seen in a phase III study of the agent versus placebo, with best supportive care, in patients with metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC) refractory to standard therapies.

A head-to-head comparison of cetuximab and bevacizumab in a phase III trial that was nearly 10 years in the making showed equivalence for chemotherapy plus either agent in terms of OS, PFS, and response rates for patients with certain previously untreated metastatic colorectal cancers.

Initial treatment with surgical resection of the primary tumor followed by systemic treatment yielded a 4.7-month OS benefit compared with the same treatments administered in the reverse order in patients with mCRC receiving palliative care.

Johanna Bendell, MD, director of GI Cancer Research Program, associate director, Drug Development Program, Sarah Cannon Research Institute, discusses a randomized phase III placebo-controlled trial that explored apatinib as a treatment for patients with advanced gastric cancer.

Alan P. Venook, MD, a professor in the Department of Medicine (Hematology/Oncology) at the University of California, San Francisco, discusses implications from the CALGB/SWOG 80405 trial on the targeted therapies administered in colorectal cancer.

Treatment with the oral nucleoside TAS-102 significantly extended OS and PFS for patients with metastatic colorectal cancer refractory to standard therapies.

Andrea Wang-Gillam, MD, PhD, from the Siteman Cancer Center, discusses the trial design and results of the phase III NAPOLI-1 trial that examined MM-398 with 5-fluorouracil and leucovorin in patients with metastatic pancreatic cancer following progression on gemcitabine-based therapy.