Gastrointestinal Cancer

“...we don’t focus on survivorship enough. It’s important to understand the other factors involved in surviving besides just a treatment.”

Patients with ERBB2-positive esophagogastric adenocarcinoma appeared to experience improved efficacy following treatment with a combination of trastuzumab and nivolumab plus leucovorin, fluorouracil, and oxaliplatin vs historical data.

Stacy Stein, MD, and co-investigators, research omalizumab to treat oxaliplatin hypersensitivity reactions for patients with gastrointestinal cancers.

The FDA has delayed the decision to approve tislelizumab monotherapy for patients with advanced or metastatic esophageal squamous cell carcinoma following prior systemic therapy, due to COVID-19 travel restrictions.

Howard A. Burris, MD, highlighted previous findings of the phase 3 TOPAZ-1 trial assessing durvalumab plus gemcitabine and cisplatin vs placebo plus gemcitabine and cisplatin in advanced biliary tract cancer and patient-reported outcomes data that were presented at 2022 ASCO.

In this month's Letter to the Readers, ONCOLOGY co-editor-in-chief Howard S. Hochster, MD, discusses oxaliplatin hypersensitivity reaction in gastrointestinal cancer.

The phase 3 RATIONALE 306 trial showed improved overall survival for patients receiving tislelizumab plus chemotherapy vs placebo and chemotherapy for unresectable, locally advanced or metastatic esophageal squamous cell carcinoma regardless of PD-L1 status.

Results from the phase 2 HERIZON study identified improved overall survival for patients treated with IMU-131 plus standard of care vs standard of care alone in advanced or metastatic gastric or gastroesophageal junction cancer.

Patients with gastrointestinal stromal tumors may benefit from 68GA-RM26 PET/CT vs 18F-FDG, according to findings presented at the 2022 Society of Nuclear Medicine & Molecular Imaging Annual Meeting.

Shubham Pant, MD discusses key findings from a basket trial examining the use of erdafitinib in patients with gastrointestinal and other solid tumor malignancies.

A 100% clinical complete response rate was observed when patients with stage II/III mismatch repair-deficient locally advanced rectal cancer were treated with dostarlimab.

A Claudin18.2–specific CAR T-cell therapy has shown promise in the treatment of patients with heavily pretreated advanced gastric and pancreatic adenocarcinoma whose disease expresses the marker.

Sam Klempner, MD, spoke about how clinicians exploring use of ctDNA in gastrointestinal cancers may inform their research with results from other tumor types.

The results of the phase 3 TOPAZ-1 trial led to the priority review of durvalumab plus chemotherapy in patients with locally advanced biliary tract cancer.

Patients with unresectable or metastatic gastric or gastroesophageal junction cancer that is relapsed/refractory following other approved therapies may benefit from treatment with single-agent CMG901, which was granted fast track designation by the FDA.

Sam Klempner, MD, spoke about clinical management and ctDNA for gastrointestinal cancers.

Sam Klempner, MD, spoke about the importance of expanding minimal residual disease platforms for patients with gastrointestinal cancers.

Patients with resectable gastric and gastroesophageal junction adenocarcinoma experienced good pathologic complete response with standard of care chemotherapy and perioperative/adjuvant pembrolizumab.

Results of CheckMate 649 trial show consistently improved outcomes across advanced gastric cancer, gastroesophageal junction cancer, and esophageal adenocarcinoma when nivolumab is administered in combination with chemotherapy.

Black patients were reported to be significantly less likely to receive standard of care surgical treatment for cancer of the gastrointestinal tract compared with White patients.

Sam Klempner, MD, spoke about utilizing ctDNA the treat nonmetastatic gastroesophageal cancers at 2022 IGCC.

A new drug application for futibatinib has been accepted for priority review in patients with previously treated locally advanced or metastatic cholangiocarcinoma with FGFR2 gene rearrangements.

Yelena Y. Janjigian, MD, spoke about which biomarkers were most predictive for treatment of localized gastric cancer.

Yelena Y. Janjigian, MD, spoke about using immunotherapy across settings to treat localized gastric cancer.

In this month’s Letter to the Readers, ONCOLOGY co-editor-in-chief Howard S. Hochster, MD, reviews results of the CIRCULATE-Japan clinical trial that were presented at the 2022 Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium.

Yelena Y. Janjigian, MD, spoke about using immunotherapy to treat localized gastric cancer.

NUC-1031 plus cisplatin was unlikely to reach a primary end point of improved overall survival in advanced biliary tract cancer, leading to the discontinuation of the phase 3 NuTide:121 trial.

Patients with advanced midgut neuroendocrine tumors experienced a clinically relevant improvement in median overall survival when treated with 177Lu-Dotatate compared with the control of high-dose long-acting octreotide, although the difference was not significant.

The CheckMate 648 trial found that using a combination of nivolumab and chemotherapy or nivolumab plus ipilimumab vs chemotherapy alone improved survival in advanced esophageal squamous-cell carcinoma.

“The pendulum is moving fast towards giving chemotherapy prior to surgery, and the research is going on to continue that trend.”