Dr. Sun on First-Line Treatment Challenges in Gastric Cancer

Weijing Sun, MD, FACP, professor of medicine, The Sprint Professorship of Medicine Oncology, University of Kansas School of Medicine, director, Division of Medical Oncology, associate director, University of Kansas Cancer Center, discusses remaining challenges in the first-line treatment of patients with gastric cancer.

The field of gastric cancer has witnessed several advances with regard to treatment. Such advances include the introduction of checkpoint inhibitors over recent years, Sun says.

Although multiple options are available in the second- and third-line settings, 5-fluorouracil plus platinum-based chemotherapy remains the frontline standard of care for patients with gastric cancer, explains Sun.

Predictive biomarkers like HER2 can aid in guiding treatment selection, says Sun. However, the majority of biomarkers, such as microsatellite instability status and PD-L1 expression, are not gastric-cancer specific.

Future research efforts are ongoing to try to answer why checkpoint inhibitors, are advantageous in later-line settings, but appear to have little utility in the frontline space, Sun concludes.