Gastrointestinal Cancer News

SAN FRANCISCO — Daniel V.T. Catenacci, MD, a GI medical oncologist at the University of Chicago, discusses a novel gastric cancer prognostic model — the Yonsei University Gastric Cancer Prediction Tool — for which validation data was presented during a session he co-chaired at the Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium.

In October, WHO released data suggesting an association between red or processed meats and an increased risk for colorectal cancer.

ASCO has named progress in immunotherapy for melanoma and other malignancies as the top cancer advance of the year, according to “Clinical Cancer Advances 2016: ASCO’s Annual Report on Progress Against Cancer.”

A small subgroup of patients with colorectal cancer have demonstrated a “really remarkable benefit” from the “immunotherapy revolution,” according to J. Randolph Hecht, MD, professor of clinical medicine in the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and director of the gastrointestinal oncology program at UCLA.

The risk for progression to high-grade dysplasia and esophageal adenocarcinoma was found to be increased in patients with both Barrett’s esophagus and confirmed persistent low-grade dysplasia.

In this guest commentary, Marcovalerio Melis, MD, FACS, discusses irreversible electroporation for locally advanced pancreatic cancer, following a presentation on the topic delivered at the Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium by Robert C.G. Martin, MD, PhD, FACS, from University of Louisville. Melis is an associate professor of surgery at NYU Langone's Perlmutter Cancer Center and serves as chief of surgical oncology at New York Harbor Healthcare System VAMC.

SAN FRANCISCO — Programmed death-1 blockade demonstrated promising activity in mismatch repair deficient gastrointestinal cancers in a phase 2 trial, according to data presented at the Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium.

The National Cancer Centre Singapore, Singapore Clinical Research Institute and IMS Health announced a collaboration to develop its first hepatocellular carcinoma registry in Asia via the Asian HCC Physician Network, in an effort to better manage patients, according to a press release.

The time between a positive fecal blood test result and a follow-up colonoscopy varied greatly across four U.S. health care systems, according to study results.

SAN FRANCISCO — Adding ziv-aflibercept to FOLFOX regimens did not significantly improve survival among patients with chemotherapy-naïve metastatic esophagogastric adenocarcinoma, according to data from a phase 2 randomized trial presented at the Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium.