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Adjuvant and Neoadjuvant Therapy for Gastric Cancer

  • Upper Gastrointestinal Cancers (JD Berlin, Section Editor)
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Current Treatment Options in Oncology Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Opinion statement

To improve outcome of resectable gastric cancer, several treatment strategies have been evaluated. These include adjuvant chemotherapy, adjuvant chemoradiotherapy, and perioperative chemotherapy. The US Intergroup 0116 trial reported the benefit of postoperative chemoradiotherapy using 5–FU/leucovorin in a U.S. population. In this study, only 10 % of patients received D2 resection. For Korean patients after D2 resection, the ARTIST trial failed to show any benefit from adding radiotherapy to adjuvant chemotherapy in terms of 3-year disease-free survival. The MAGIC trial compared perioperative chemotherapy with surgery alone and reported a prolonged 5-year overall survival in the perioperative chemotherapy arm. In resectable gastric cancer, the benefit of adjuvant chemotherapy compared with surgery alone has been clearly demonstrated. After D2 dissection, S-1 adjuvant chemotherapy improved the overall survival (ACTS-GC trial) and capecitabine/oxaliplatin combination chemotherapy improved 3-year disease-free survival (CLASSIC trial). To date, for resectable gastric cancer, the use of chemotherapy in addition to surgery is beneficial for the reduction of recurrence and to improve overall survival. The optimal sequence of chemotherapy and surgery, as well as optimal chemotherapeutic agents, should be further studied. In D2-resected gastric cancer, the addition of radiotherapy to chemotherapy does not appear to provide any additional benefit.]

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References and Recommended Reading

Papers of particular interest, published recently, have been highlighted as: • Of importance •• Of major importance.

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Conflicts of Interest

Yung-Jue Bang has served as a consultant and received honoraria and research grants from F Hoffmann La-Roche Ltd and Sanofi-Aventis. Do-Youn Oh reports no conflicts of interest.

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  1. Department of Internal Medicine, Seoul National University College of Medicine, 101 Daehak-ro, Jongno-gu, Seoul, 110-744, Korea

    Do-Youn Oh MD & Yung-Jue Bang MD

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Correspondence to Yung-Jue Bang MD.

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Oh, DY., Bang, YJ. Adjuvant and Neoadjuvant Therapy for Gastric Cancer. Curr. Treat. Options in Oncol. 14, 311–320 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11864-013-0238-4

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