GI CANCERS

Dana-Farber Cancer Institute has announced Brian Wolpin, MD, MPH, has been appointed Robert T. and Judith B. Hale Chair in Pancreatic Cancer.

Michael J. Overman, MD, medical oncologist, Department of Gastrointestinal Medical Oncology, Division of Cancer Medicine, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, discusses updated results from the CheckMate-142 trial, which investigated nivolumab alone or in combination with ipilimumab in patients with DNA mismatch repair deficient/microsatellite instability high metastatic colorectal cancer. 

Arturo Loaiza-Bonilla, MD,&nbsp;the potential role of <em>BRAF</em> and <em>CTNNB1</em> mutations in the survival difference between CRC patients with left- and right-sided tumors.

Ali Maawy, MD, and Patrick M. Boland, MD, provide a brief review of the immune environment of colorectal cancer (CRC) and recently reported studies of immunotherapy in CRC.

Telotristat ethyl has been approved by the FDA for use in&nbsp;combination with somatostatin analog as a treatment for carcinoid syndrome diarrhea&nbsp;in patients with metastatic neuroendocrine tumors.

NYU Langone has announced Theodore H. Welling III, MD, will lead a new state-of-the-art liver cancer program at the medical center to advance clinical care and accelerate the translation of lab breakthroughs into superior treatments.

John L. Marshall, MD, chief, Division of Hematology and Oncology, Medstar Georgetown University Hospital, discusses the current state of liver-directed therapy in metastatic colorectal cancer.&nbsp;

The results of a randomized trial showed patients with advanced colorectal cancer had a modest gain in progression-free survival with the addition of irinotecan to standard chemotherapy plus an angiogenesis inhibitor as induction therapy.

The latest clinical trial data strongly support anti&ndash;PD-1 therapy as the new second-line treatment standard for patients with microsatellite instability-high metastatic colorectal cancer, says Michael J. Overman, MD.<br /> &nbsp;

The addition of ADI-PEG 20, a pegylated form of an arginine-depleting enzyme, to nab-paclitaxel and gemcitabine has encouraging activity in patients with advanced pancreatic adenocarcinoma while demonstrating minimal additional toxicity over that with cytotoxic therapy alone.

<span style="font-size:12px">Treatment administration and supportive care costs were significantly higher for patients with metastatic pancreatic cancer who were treated with FOLFIRINOX as first-line therapy compared with the combination of nab-paclitaxel and gemcitabine.</span>

A gemcitabine-free regimen resulted in numerically better survival compared with a conventional gemcitabine regimen in patients with metastatic pancreatic cancer, results of a randomized trial showed.

Overall survival was improved and disease progression was slowed in patients with metastatic pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma when nanoliposomal irinotecan was added to 5-fluorouracil and leucovorin, irrespective of treatment history, a posthoc analysis of a randomized trial showed.

An immunotherapy-containing regimen was well-tolerated and had a manageable safety profile in patients with microsatellite-high metastatic colorectal cancer, according to results of a preliminary clinical evaluation presented at the 2017 Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium<span style="font-size:10.8333px">.</span>

Mark S. Talamonti, MD, clinical professor, NorthShore University HealthSystem, discusses the current and future role of minimally invasive surgery in pancreatic cancer.

Gabriela Chiorean, MD, professor of medicine, discusses an ongoing phase I study of nivolumab with nab-paclitaxel plus gemcitabine in pancreatic cancer.

As many as one-third of patients with treatment-resistant colorectal cancer attained objective responses with the stemness inhibitor napabucasin plus FOLFIRI chemotherapy with or without bevacizumab.

Patients receiving the same diagnosis, colorectal cancer with synchronous peritoneal metastases (PM), were offered different treatments that led to dramatically different outcomes based upon the institution in which they were diagnosed.

Patients with advanced hepatocellular carcinoma had objective responses and prolonged survival when treated with single-agent nivolumab, data from a dose escalation/expansion trial showed.

The incidence of hand-foot syndrome occurred significantly less often in patients treated with S-1 compared to capecitabine in patients with metastatic colorectal cancer.

Geoffrey Y. Ku, MD, medical oncologist, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, discusses the future of immune checkpoint inhibition in gastric and esophageal cancers.

Philip A. Philip, MD, PhD, professor of oncology and pharmacology, Karmanos Cancer Institute, Wayne State University, discusses how researchers in the pancreatic cancer field can learn from recent negative clinical trials.

Salah-Eddin Al-Batran, MD, medical oncologist and Director at the Institute of Clinical Cancer Research, Frankurt, Germany, discusses the findings of a study of paclitaxel with everolimus in gastric cancer.

Lenvatinib was shown to be noninferior to standard therapy with sorafenib in the frontline treatment of patients with unresectable hepatocellular carcinoma.

Adding a platinum to standard gemcitabine and nab-paclitaxel led to impressive responses and overall survival rates in a small pilot trial in patients with stage IV pancreatic cancer.

CCX872-B, a potent, selective oral inhibitor of CCR2, added to FOLFIRINOX was associated with a tumor control rate of 78% at week 12 in a single-arm study of patients with locally advanced or metastatic pancreatic cancer.

Encouraging clinical activity with limited toxicity in patients with metastatic pancreatic cancer will lead to further evaluation of nivolumab plus nab-paclitaxel with gemcitabine, investigators reported at the Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium in San Francisco.

According to results from a randomized clinical trial,^&nbsp;adding vemurafenib to the routinely employed combination of irinotecan and cetuximab prolonged progression-free survival in patients with <em>BRAF</em>-mutant metastatic colorectal cancer.

In an update of the phase II CheckMate-142 trial,&nbsp;the promising antitumor activity of nivolumab in patients with microsatellite instability-high metastatic colorectal cancer was sustained.

Eileen M. O&rsquo;Reilly, MD, discusses results of a randomized phase II trial of tarextumab in combination with nab-paclitaxel and gemcitabine in patients with untreated metastatic pancreatic cancer.