A comparative study of neoadjuvant treatment with gemcitabine plus nab-paclitaxel versus surgery first for pancreatic adenocarcinoma

Impact of BRCA1/2 gene mutations on survival of patients with pancreatic cancer: A case-series analysis

“…Neodjuvant chemoradiotherapy improves the survival for resectable PADC and prognosis for loco-regional metastatic disease. Recently, the multidrug chemotherapy regimens such as a combination of fluorouracil, irinotecan, oxaliplatin, and leucovorin (FOLFIRINOX) and gemcitabine plus albumin bound to paclitaxel particles (nab-paclitaxel) have gained popularity in the preoperative and postoperative settings based on their efficiency in patients with metastatic disease 1119. Platinum agents exert their antineoplastic activity by causing DNA crosslinking.…”

Biweekly Gemcitabine/Nab-Paclitaxel as First-line Treatment for Advanced Pancreatic Cancer

“…We decided to administer the study combination to all eligible patients diagnosed with advanced pancreatic cancer as first-line treatment. Gemcitabine/nab-paclitaxel is an active regimen for pancreatic cancer, as also shown in the neoadjuvant setting (12). However, attempts to combine it with other agents, such as immunotherapy (13) or apatorsen, a heat-shock protein 27 targeting antisense oligonucleotide (14), did not lead to a better response.…”

The issue of how predict survival of patients affected by locally advanced pancreatic cancer

“…On the other hand, for BR PA the benefits are still under investigation and in my opinion, still most of the centers did not give preoperative chemotherapy. In my previous study (5), comparing neoadjuvancy vs. upfront surgery in PA, OS and disease-free survival were higher in the BR PA group of patients receiving preoperative treatment. Furthermore, almost 40% of patients did not underwent to adjuvant treatment because of postoperative complications.…”

“…However, more recently, a better understanding of the molecular biology of PA has allowed the development of novel chemotherapeutic agents and combinations such as FOLFIRINOX and gemcitabine/nabpaclitaxel based treatment with or without combination with concomitant radiotherapy (5,6). These new protocols are showing an improved radiological response with increased OS in metastasic PA and increased resection rate in LA PA compared with the past (5,6,(8)(9)(10). For this reason, with the aim of predicting the response of neoadjuvant treatment for LA PA, the topic of this paper is of great interest.…”