Colon cancer.

Colon cancer is one of the leading tumours in the world and it is considered among the big killers, together with lung, prostate and breast cancer. In the recent years very important advances occurred in the field of treatment of this frequent disease: adjuvant chemotherapy was demonstrated to be effective, chiefly in stage III patients, and surgery was optimized in order to achieve the best results with a low morbidity. Several new target-oriented drugs are under evaluation and some of them (cetuximab and bevacizumab) have already exhibited a good activity/efficacy, mainly in combination with chemotherapy.

Colorectal cancer treatment in elderly patients: an update on recent clinical studies.

Colorectal cancer (CRC) is one of the most common cancers in the Western world, with > 500,000 new cases diagnosed each year. One of the strongest risk factors for colon cancer is age. Physicians and their older patients commonly face the dilemma of whether to give/receive systemic chemotherapy for CRC.

Feasibility of sequential therapy with FOLFIRI followed by docetaxel/cisplatin in patients with radically resected gastric adenocarcinoma. A randomized phase III trial.

Objective: Combination therapies of fluorouracil (FU) with irinotecan (CPT-11) and docetaxel plus cisplatin have been proven to be active in metastatic gastric cancer. In this paper, we present the results of a phase III trial in which these two combinations given sequentially were compared to mitomycin C (MMC) monochemotherapy in an adjuvant setting.

Methods: 169 patients with radically resected gastric cancer were randomized to receive CPT-11 (180 mg/m2 day 1), leucovorin (100 mg/m2 days 1-2), FU (400-600 mg/m2 days 1-2, q 14; for four cycles; FOLFIRI regimen), followed by docetaxel (85 mg/m2 day 1), cisplatin (75 mg/m2 day 1, q 21; for three cycles; arm A), or MMC (8 mg/m2 days 1-2 as 2-hour infusion, q 42; for four cycles; arm B).