Weekly infusional 5-fluorouracil plus/minus other drugs for the treatment of advanced gastric cancer.

Based on preclinical data and the promising results being achieved with infusional 5-FU in colorectal and breast cancer, we investigated a weekly schedule of a 24-hour infusion of 5-FU plus folinic acid (HD-FU/FA) in patients failing to first-line chemotherapy and HD-FU/FA plus cisplatin (C) or plus cisplatin/epidoxorubicin (C/E) in chemo-naive patients with advanced gastric cancer. In all three trials the results achieved with the tested chemotherapy regimens indicated high activity and good tolerability. All three protocols were administered as outpatient treatment.