Chemotherapy Before Surgery Benefits Pancreatic Cancer Patients

The team recruited 90 patients in the UK and Germany between 2014 and 2018 and randomly allocated them to the different treatment groups and followed them up for 12 months.

Is it Worth Having Chemotherapy for Pancreatic Cancer?

Some patients had surgery as their first treatment, some had chemotherapy before surgery, and others had a combination of chemotherapy and radiotherapy (chemoradiotherapy) before surgery.

The researchers found that neoadjuvant therapy provided a significant survival benefit for patients. The 1-year overall survival rate was 84% for FOLFIRINOX, 78% for gemcitabine plus capecitabine and 60% got capecitabine-based chemoradiotherapy, compared to 39% for immediate surgery.

There was no significant difference in the rates of surgical removal between the surgery and neoadjuvant groups of patients and the treatments were all well tolerated.

Professor Paula Ghaneh, who led the study at the University of Liverpool’s Department of Molecular and Clinical Cancer Medicine, said: “Even though this was a feasibility study, these results provide compelling evidence for the use of short course neoadjuvant chemotherapy in borderline resectable pancreatic cancer. Future trials will focus on the type and length of neoadjuvant therapy in borderline pancreatic cancer. Further work will be needed to explore the role of neoadjuvant therapy in resectable pancreatic cancer.”

Chief Executive of Cancer Research UK, Michelle Mitchell, said:

“One of the quickest ways that we can beat cancer is by making more effective use of treatments that we already have at our fingertips.

“ESPAC5 trial shows exciting new evidence that chemotherapy before surgery could benefit patients with pancreatic cancer, when it is caught early enough.

“I am looking forward to further research which will boost the case for pre-operative chemotherapy to be used routinely in the NHS.”

Source: Eurekalert