GI CANCERS

The combination of trastuzumab (Herceptin) and lapatinib (Tykerb) resulted in a 30% objective response rate (ORR) in heavily pretreated patients with HER2-positive metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC), suggesting a new targeted therapy strategy for later lines of treatment that supports testing for the aberration.

The impact of the recent findings regarding tumor sidedness in patients with metastatic colorectal cancer are potentially practice-changing, with data demonstrating that patients with right-sided tumors have a poorer prognosis than those with left-sided tumors. In addition, sidedness could be clinically relevant as a predictive biomarker of response to standard frontline treatments.

Brian Hemphill, MD, provides insight on some of the challenges currently being faced in GI malignancies—specifically, colorectal cancer, pancreatic cancer, and gastic cancer—and how molecular profiles of tumors will dramatically change outcomes for these patients.

Ramesh K. Ramanathan, MD, discusses clinical trials investigating combination treatments with standard chemotherapies to improve outcomes in pancreatic cancer.

Jeffrey A. Drebin, MD, PhD, has been named chairman of the Department of Surgery at Memorial Sloan Kettering (MSK) Cancer Center, MSK has announced.

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.