GI Cancer Video Perspectives

In this video, Nilofer Azad, MD, director of Colorectal Cancer Patient Care and Research Center of Excellence at Johns Hopkins, discusses:

• the importance of screening for colorectal cancer and treatment pathways available to patients who are diagnosed;
• treatments being explored in GI cancers, including studies on immunotherapies, new treatment targets and how “there’s a lot of exciting work that’s going to be happening in the next 5 to 10 years;”
• recent innovations in GI cancer, notably “groundbreaking work” presented at ASCO 2022 on the use of an immunotherapy — dostarlimab-gxly (Jemperli, GSK) — as a first-line treatment in a subset of patients with rectal cancer;
• risk factors for most GI cancers, including smoking and high levels of alcohol consumption, and genetic risk factors in certain GI cancers;
• how in light of recent increases in colorectal cancer in younger patients, “I would really urge, especially primary care doctors and gastroenterologists, to maintain a relatively high index of suspicion for people to possibly have a cancer when they present as symptoms that, if they were 60 or 70 years old, you would absolutely be evaluating them for cancer;” and
• unmet needs in GI cancers, including that “we still need ways to detect cancer easily, early — and that’s true across cancers, but specifically GI cancers, which can be pretty vague in their initial presenting symptoms.”