Efficacy of the combination of long-acting release octreotide and tamoxifen in patients with advanced hepatocellular carcinoma: a randomised multicentre phase III study

Abstract

To assess the efficacy of the combination of long-acting release (LAR) octreotide and tamoxifen (TMX) for the treatment of advanced hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). A total of 109 patients with advanced HCC were randomised to receive octreotide LAR combined with TMX (n ¼ 56) (experimental treatment group) or TMX alone (n ¼ 53; control group). The clinical, biological and tumoural parameters were recorded every 3 months until death. Primary end point was patient survival; secondary end points were the impact of therapy on tumour response, quality of life and variceal bleeding episodes. Univariate and multivariate analyses were performed for assessment of specific prognostic factors. The median survival was 3 months (95% CI 1.4 -4.6) for the experimental treatment group and 6 months (CI 95% 2 -10) for the control group (P ¼ 0.609). There was no difference in terms of a-foetoprotein (a-FP) decrease, tumour regression, improvement of quality of life and prevention of variceal bleeding between the two groups. Variables associated with a better survival in the multivariate analysis were: presence of cirrhosis, a-FP level o400 ng ml À1 and Okuda stage I. The combination of octreotide LAR and TMX does not influence survival, tumour progression or quality of life in patients with advanced HCC.

Adjuvant Tamoxifen Influences the Lipid Profile in Breast Cancer Patients

“…Of interest, some studies have suggested that adjuvant tamoxifen exhibits different effects on the lipid and liver profiles of cancer patients [5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25]. Researchers sought to determine the appropriate role of adjuvant tamoxifen in breast cancer patients regarding serum total cholesterol (TC), triglyceride (TG), high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C), low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C), aspartate transaminase (AST), and alanine transaminase (ALT) levels.…”

Immunohistochemical expression and localization of somatostatin receptor subtypes in androgen ablated prostate cancer

“…The antiproliferative and antiangiogenic properties of SSTR2-specific SST analogues octreotide and lanreotide have been exploited in several clinical trials [2,22]. Therefore, it is very important to determine cell expression and localization of the five SSTRs.…”

Impact of different anticancer regimens on biomarkers of angiogenesis in patients with advanced hepatocellular cancer

“…For the long-acting somatostatin analogue octreotide, which revealed conXicting clinical results (Kouroumalis et al 1998;Dimitroulopoulos et al 2002Dimitroulopoulos et al , 2007Raderer et al 2000;Yuen et al 2002;Verset et al 2007;Treiber et al 2007;Becker et al 2007;Cebon et al 2006;Plentz et al 2005;Slijkhuis et al 2005;Rabe et al 2002;Pan et al 2003;Samonakis et al 2002), we and others demonstrated that clinical response was associated with a reduction in systemic vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF)-A secretion (Treiber et al 2006;Jia et al 2003;Poon et al 2004Poon et al , 2001. Sorafenib, a combined small molecule VEGF/ RAF kinase inhibitor resulted in a moderate prolongation of survival in Child A patients (Abou-Alfa et al 2006;Llovet et al 2007).…”