Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium (ASCO GI)

Switching neoadjuvant chemotherapy regimens based on PET imaging after induction chemotherapy improved pathologic complete response rates in patients with esophageal and gastroesophageal junction cancers.

A watch-and-wait approach is emerging as a potential treatment strategy for patients with rectal cancer.

Patients with metastatic colorectal cancer who engaged in daily moderate physical activity demonstrated a reduction in mortality and cancer progression.

Tanios Bekaii-Saab, MD, associate professor, Department of Internal Medicine, The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center, discusses the benefits patients receive with regorafenib for the treatment of colorectal cancer.

Mismatch repair-deficient gastrointestinal tumors are highly responsive to checkpoint blockade with anti-PD-1 therapy.

A potential biomarker to guide chemotherapy for metastatic colorectal cancer failed to stratify patients by progression-free survival or responsiveness to bevacizumab.

Pamela L. Kunz, MD, assistant professor, Division of Oncology, Stanford University School of Medicine, discusses tumor response in the CLARINET study, which examined lanreotide depot versus placebo in patients with metastatic gastroenteropancreatic neuroendocrine tumors (GEP-NETs).

Marcovalerio Melis, MD, associate professor, Department of Surgery, NYU Langone Medical Center, discusses a study examining if surgery can be avoided in patients with advanced rectal cancer by using diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging to predict pathologic response.

Patients with metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC) had marginal yet inconsistent improvement in clinical outcomes when treated with a three-drug chemotherapy regimen plus bevacizumab compared with a doublet-bevacizumab regimen.

Neoadjuvant treatment with carboplatin and paclitaxel-based chemotherapy produced a 27.9% pathologic complete response rate in patients with resectable esophageal cancer, according to results of the NEOSCOPE trial.

The investigational anti–PD-L1 antibody avelumab demonstrated clinical activity as a second-line and maintenance therapy for patients with unresectable gastric or gastroesophageal junction cancer.

Safi Shahda, MD, assistant professor of Clinical Medicine, Indiana University School of Medicine, discusses a phase Ib study examining the cancer stem cell pathway inhibitor BBI-608 in combination with gemcitabine and nab-paclitaxel in patients with metastatic pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma.

Theodore S. Hong, MD, director, Gastrointestinal Service, Department of Radiation Oncology, discusses high-dose hypofractionated proton beam therapy for unresectable primary liver cancers.

Nearly a quarter of patients with resectable hepatocellular carcinoma experienced major tumor necrosis of greater than or equal to 50% following preoperative treatment with sorafenib.

The PD-1 inhibitor nivolumab (Opdivo) had an overall response rate of 14% with an acceptable safety profile in patients with gastric or gastroesophageal junction cancer.

The PD-1 inhibitor pembrolizumab (Keytruda) elicited encouraging activity with mild adverse events as a treatment for patients with advanced PD-L1–positive esophageal carcinoma.

Ghassan K. Abou-Alfa, MD, medical oncologist, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, discusses the CALGB 80802 study, which examined sorafenib versus sorafenib plus doxorubicin in patients with advanced hepatocellular carcinoma in the first-line setting.

Tanios Bekaii-Saab, MD, associate professor, Department of Internal Medicine, The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center, discusses sequencing regorafenib and TAS-102 for the treatment of patients with colorectal cancer.

The immune checkpoint inhibitor nivolumab demonstrated activity in patients with previously treated esophageal cancer.

Adding liposomal irinotecan to 5-fluorouracil and leucovorin reduced the risk of death by 25% for patients with metastatic pancreatic cancer following progression on a gemcitabine-based regimen.

Holly G. Prigerson, PhD, professor of Sociology in Medicine, Irving Sherwood Wright Professor in Geriatrics, Joan and Sanford I. Weill Department of Medicine, director, Center for Research on End of Life Care, Weill Cornell Medicine and NewYorkPresbyterian Hospital, discusses chemotherapy regimens for patients with advanced gastric cancer.

Amitabh Chak, MD, professor of Medicine, Gastroenterology, Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, discusses challenges with screening patients for Barrett's esophagus and esophageal cancer.

Preoperative treatment with short-course radiation therapy plus 3 cycles of chemotherapy improved overall survival (OS) and was associated with fewer adverse events compared with standard chemoradiation for patients with locally advanced rectal cancer.

Everolimus reduced the risk of disease progression by at least 40% in patients with either gastrointestinal neuroendocrine tumors or NETs of unknown primary origin.

For patients with advanced midgut neuroendocrine tumors, the peptide receptor radionuclide therapy Lu-Dotatate continues to confer a major therapeutic benefit, reducing the risk of disease progression or death by 79% and signaling an improvement in overall survival as well.

Treatment with a multitargeted tyrosine kinase inhibitor led to a small but statistically significant improvement in progression-free survival (PFS) in patients with advanced, previously treated metastatic colorectal cancer.

Kei Muro, MD, of the Aichi Cancer Center Hospital in Nagoya, Japan, discusses updated findings from the KEYNOTE-012 study, which looked at pembrolizumab for the treatment if several types of cancer.

Laura Dawson, MD, Princess Margaret Hospital, University of Toronto, talks about the challenges in treating hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC).

Almost half of patients with borderline resectable or locally advanced pancreatic cancer had objective responses to treatment with an investigational chemokine receptor antagonist.

Lanreotide improved progression-free survival and resulted in more disease control compared with an observation strategy among patients with pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors.