ASCO 2018: Dr. Bekaii-Saab Highlights Pancreatic Cancer Abstracts

Tanios Bekaii-Saab, MD, FACP, professor of medicine, Mayo Clinic, discusses the use of adjuvant FOLFIRINOX for the treatment of patients with metastatic pancreatic cancer. The combination, along with other research developments in oncology, are why Bekaii-Saab believes these are “exciting times” for the pancreatic cancer paradigm.

In a study presented at the 2018 ASCO Annual Meeting, researchers took an adjuvant approach to treatment, comparing FOLFIRINOX with standard gemcitabine. The primary focus of the randomized, phase III study consisting of nearly 500 patients was disease-free survival.

Bekaii-Saab says that under the gemcitabine arm, median disease-free survival was about 12 months, which is expected. For patients receiving FOLFIRINOX, disease-free survival was 26.1 months. Overall survival (OS) under gemcitabine was a median of 34 months; under FOLFIRINOX it was over 54 months—which is double what the standard OS was for patients with pancreatic cancer just a few years ago, Bekaii-Saab adds.