Thibaud Kössler, MD, PhD, on Localized Rectal Cancer: Neoadjuvant Pembrolizumab and Radiotherapy
2020 Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium
Thibaud Kössler, MD, PhD, of Geneva University Hospital, discusses the first trial to study the efficacy and safety of anti–PD-1 immunotherapy plus short-course radiotherapy in localized microsatellite-stable rectal cancer. The study explores whether a gene signature can predict sensitivity to immunotherapy (Abstract TPS272).
Eileen M. O’Reilly, MD, of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, discusses phase II trial findings showing that cisplatin and gemcitabine, with or without veliparib, exceeded a prespecified response rate for patients with pancreatic adenocarcinoma and a germline BRCA/PALB2 mutation (Abstract 639).
Zev A. Wainberg, MD, of the UCLA Medical Center, discusses the first subset analysis of how a combined positive score in gastric and gastroesophageal junction cancers related to the efficacy of pembrolizumab in PD-L1–positive disease (Abstract 427).
Eyal Meiri, MD, of the Cancer Treatment Centers of America at Southeastern Regional Medical Center, discusses his findings on heavily pretreated patients with colorectal cancer with high tumor mutational burden. Monotherapy with pembrolizumab showed antitumor activity, which merits further study to confirm efficacy (Abstract 133).
Danielle S. Bitterman, MD, of the Harvard University Radiation Oncology Program and Massachusetts General Hospital, discusses an analysis of genomic and clinical data from 97 patients with pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma with circulating tumor DNA. Mutations were most frequently detected in patients with locally advanced and metastatic disease (Abstract 753).
Thomas Yau, MBBS, of the University of Hong Kong, discusses this triplet combination, which yielded better responses than doublet combination therapy in patients with advanced liver cancer, but with more severe adverse events and more treatment discontinuations (Abstract 478).
