Dr. Smaglo on Novel Therapies in Advanced Gastric Cancer

Brandon G. Smaglo, MD, FACP, associate professor in the Department of Gastrointestinal Medical Oncology of the Division of Cancer Medicine at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, discusses novel therapies in advanced gastric cancer.

For a long time, treatment for patients with gastric cancer had been chemotherapy followed by more chemotherapy, says Smaglo. While chemotherapy continues to serve as the backbone, what physicians investigators have found that they are able to add appropriate additional targeted agents to that paradigm. For example, for a long time, the first-line treatment would be a 2-drug combination of chemotherapy and then trastuzumab (Herceptin) would be added to that regimen if the tumor was HER2 expressive, explains Smaglo.

The antiangiogenic ramucirumab (Cyramza) has since emerged as an option in the second-line setting. As such, many will build their first-line regimen in order to tailor the second-line regimen to use ramucirumab in combination with the chemotherapy agent paclitaxel, concludes Smaglo.