Chemotherapy with gemcitabine plus cisplatin in patients with advanced thymic squamous cell carcinoma: Evaluation of efficacy and toxicity

Abstract

BackgroundSquamous cell carcinoma of the thymus is a rare thymic epithelial neoplasm that tends to widely metastasize at initial presentation. Because of its rarity, the optimal chemotherapeutic regimen remains uncertain. A gemcitabine and cisplatin regimen has shown promising efficacy in the treatment of other squamous cell carcinomas. We assessed the efficacy and toxicity of this regimen in patients with advanced thymic squamous cell carcinoma.MethodsBetween January 2003 and December 2012, 13 patients with untreated or unresectable recurrent thymic squamous cell carcinomas, who were treated with gemcitabine and cisplatin, were retrospectively analyzed. The endpoints in this study were clinical response rate, disease control rate, progression‐free survival, and overall survival. Significant hematological and non‐hematological toxicities were also assessed.ResultsThree patients were in Masaoka stage IVa and 10 were in stage IVb. The median number of treatment cycles for the present chemotherapy regimen was four. The clinical response and disease control rates were 61.5% and 92.3%, respectively. The median progression‐free and median overall survival rates were 14.5 months (95% confidence interval, 9.2–19.8 months) and 50.7 months (95% confidence interval, 24.9–76.5 months), respectively. Grade 3/4 hematological toxicities were observed in seven (53.8%) patients, and non‐hematological toxicities were mild.ConclusionThis retrospective analysis demonstrated that gemcitabine plus cisplatin was active against advanced thymic squamous cell carcinoma with manageable toxicity. Gemcitabine may be a novel and alternative agent for advanced thymic squamous cell carcinoma.

Drug Loaded Gingival Mesenchymal Stromal Cells (GinPa-MSCs) Inhibit In Vitro Proliferation of Oral Squamous Cell Carcinoma

“…1 ). This result is in agreement with recent reports 24 , 25 suggesting gemcitabine as alternative agent to treat advanced squamous cell carcinoma. As expected, also the proliferation of GinPa-MSCs was dramatically affected by the three drugs and the highest activity was expressed by GCB (Fig.…”

Prognostic Factors and Efficacy of First-Line Chemotherapy in Patients with Advanced Thymic Carcinoma: A Retrospective Analysis of 286 Patients from NEJ023 Study

“…On the other hand, anthracycline-based multidrug regimens, such as ADOC, are also widely used as first-line chemotherapy in clinical practice, which could be more effective than carboplatin/paclitaxel [6,15,23]. However, the toxicities of anthracycline-based regimens, especially bone marrow suppression, are reportedly more severe than those of platinum-based doublets [5,6,8,9,[11][12][13][14][15]. Based on this background, the best regimen for advanced thymic carcinoma has been controversial.…”

“…Therefore, systemic chemotherapy is an important therapeutic modality for this malignant disease. However, due to the rarity and heterogeneity of biology, there is limited information about chemotherapy for advanced thymic carcinoma (Table 1) [5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14]. Hence, the optimal therapeutic strategy remains controversial.…”

Efficacy and toxicities of gemcitabine and cisplatin combined with endostar in advanced thymoma and thymic carcinoma

“…reported an ORR of 40% (12/30) and median PFS of 11 months . A retrospective study of 13 patients indicated GP provided a high response rate (61.5%) with manageable toxicities in advanced thymic squamous cell carcinoma; although no patients achieved complete remission and median survival was 50.7 months . Moreover, case reports have indicated that GP is effective in thymic carcinoma .…”