Gastrointestinal Cancers With Zev Wainberg, MD

Gastroenterology

Dr. Wainberg is an academic medical oncologist at the David Geffen UCLA School of Medicine specializing in gastrointestinal malignancies. He currently serves as the co-director of the GI oncology program, medical director of the Pancreas Cancer Center with a joint appointment in medicine and surgery, and as the director of the Early Phase Clinical Research Program at the Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center at UCLA. 


ASCO GI Wrap-up: Clinical Updates in Pancreatic Cancer

Dear readers, 

While we had few randomized clinical trials in pancreatic adenocarcinoma, this year, we did have several critical updates. First, from Japan, the JCOG1901 trial in pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors. In this study, 178 were enrolled, but ultimately 145 patients with GEP-NET (Gastro-pancreatic), Grade 1-2, were randomized to either the mTOR inhibitor everolimus or everolimus + lanreotide. The PFS was significantly improved with the combination (HR 0.38 [99.91% CI 0.15–0.96], P = 0.00017). While there were questions about the control arm of everolimus, the results were still quite compelling. We also had a discussion on long-term survival in patients who are frail and elderly as defined in the ECOG Giant study, with the subanalysis continuing to show how challenging this cancer is in frail and elderly patients and how defining less traditional endpoints remains important.

Kindly,
Zev Wainberg, MD


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