Gastrointestinal Cancers: mCRC (Issue 8)

When a recent trial found that apatinib, an experimental VEGFR inhibitor, met its clinical endpoint and showed efficacy as a third-line therapy in treating advanced refractory stomach cancer, one might have expected at least two cheers. After all, gastric cancer is the third most fatal form of the disease globally, and there is currently no standard third-line treatment for advanced patients.

A meta-analysis found that treatment of the bacterium H pylori with antibiotics in a population at high risk for stomach cancer is associated with a reduced incidence rate of stomach cancer.

Drinking alcohol, eating processed meat, and being overweight can each increase an individual's chance of developing stomach cancer.

Immunotherapies have been tested in melanoma, breast, prostate, kidney, and lung cancers, and are now being studied in advanced gastric cancers.

Keith T. Wilson, MD, Thomas F. Frist, Sr. Chair in Medicine, Professor, Department of Pathology, Microbiology, and Immunology, Vanderbilt University Medical Center explains the link between helicobacter pylori (H pylori) and gastric cancer.

Manish A. Shah, MD, medical oncology, NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell discusses novel targets in gastric cancer outside of HER2.

Deidre J. Cohen, MD, assistant professor, Department of Medicine, NYU Langone Medical Center, discusses unmet needs as well as future treatment approaches for patients with gastric cancer.

While the ToGA study showed a survival benefit with trastuzumab plus chemotherapy in HER2-positive gastric cancer, the drug proved no more efficacious when given in larger doses, according to Manish Shah, MD.