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Treatment of locally advanced rectal cancer involves chemoradiation, followed by total mesorectum excision. Complete response after chemoradiation is an accurate surrogate for long-term local control. Predicting complete response from pre-treatment features could represent a major step towards conservative treatment. Patients with a T2-4 N0-1 rectal adenocarcinoma treated between June 2010 and October 2016 with neo-adjuvant chemoradiation from three academic institutions were included. All clinical and treatment data was integrated in our clinical data warehouse, from which we extracted the features. Radiomics features were extracted from the tumor volume from the treatment planning CT Scan. A Deep Neural Network (DNN) was created to predict complete response, as a methodological proof-of-principle. The results were compared to a baseline Linear Regression model using only the TNM stage as a predictor and a second model created with Support Vector Machine on the same features used in the DNN. Ninety-five patients were included in the final analysis. There were 49 males (52%) and 46 females (48%). Median tumour size was 48 mm (15–130). Twenty-two patients (23%) had pathologic complete response after chemoradiation. One thousand six hundred eighty-three radiomics features were extracted. The DNN predicted complete response with an 80% accuracy, which was better than the Linear Regression model (69.5%) and the SVM model (71.58%). Our model correctly predicted complete response after neo-adjuvant rectal chemoradiotherapy in 80% of the patients of this multicenter cohort. Our results may help to identify patients who would benefit from a conservative treatment, rather than a radical resection.

This neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy combination, easy to implement and well tolerated even in elderly patients, provides a high complete response rate. It may prove to be effective in inoperable patients and may be proposed as conservative treatment in patients with a complete response to the initial course of chemoradiation.

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Two hundred fifty evaluable patients with breast cancer entered a protocol combining neoadjuvant and consolidation therapy by vinblastine (V), thiotepa (T), methotrexate (M), and 5-fluorouracil (F) (VTMF), with or without Adriamycin (A) (doxorubicin; Adria Laboratories, Columbus, OH), and radiation therapy as exclusive locoregional treatment. Tamoxifen was given to 195 patients (130 postmenopausal and 65 premenopausal) and was omitted in 55 patients (31 postmenopausal and 24 premenopausal). There were 19 Stage I, 86 Stage IIA, 51 Stage IIB, 36 Stage IIIA, and 58 Stage IIIB patients. Primary chemotherapy induced tumor volume regression of more than 75% in 41% of the patients and complete clinical regression in 30% of the patients. The 5-year disease-free survival (DFS) rates were 100% for Stage I, 82% for Stage IIA, 61% for Stage IIB, 46% for Stage IIIA, and 52% for Stage IIIB patients. Among the 72 primary relapses there were 39 distant metastases. The actuarial rate of locoregional recurrence was 13% for T2, 18% for T3, and 19% for T4. At 5 years the rate of breast preservation was 94%. Cosmetic results were excellent or good for most patients. The 5-year overall survival (OS) rates were 95% for Stage I, 94% for Stage IIA, 80% for Stage IIB, 60% for Stage IIIA, and 58% for Stage IIIB. Most patients with breast cancer should be given the option of breast-preserving treatment.

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