Is Xeloda used for pancreatic cancer?

Recently, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the combination of the targeted therapy Tarceva ® (erlotinib) and gemcitabine for the treatment of locally advanced, inoperable, or metastatic pancreatic cancer. Xeloda is an oral chemotherapy drug that belongs to a class of drugs called antimetabolites.

What is adjuvant chemotherapy pancreatic cancer?

Upfront resection with adjuvant chemotherapy is the treatment of choice in resectable tumors, offering the chance for cure. Until the 1990s, adjuvant therapy was not routinely used after resection for pancreatic cancer.

What is gemcitabine and capecitabine?

Background: Gemcitabine combined the oral fluoropyrimidine capecitabine (GemCap) is an active antitumor therapy in the treatment of advanced or metastatic pancreatic cancer, and has been shown potential synergistic activity in previous clinical trials.

Can metastatic pancreatic cancer go into remission?

Some pancreatic cancer patients reach remission. Others are able to stabilize their disease or reduce their tumors through treatment approaches like clinical trials, surgery, radiation, chemotherapy, targeted therapy or a combination of these methods.

How effective is gemcitabine for pancreatic cancer?

Treatment with single-agent gemcitabine achieved clinical benefit and symptoms improvement in 20-30% of patients. While 1-year survival was observed in 2% of 5-fluorouracil (5-FU)-treated patients, it was raised to 18% by single-agent gemcitabine.

How many cycles of gemcitabine and cisplatin can you have?

Gemcitabine + cisplatin is repeated every 21 or 28 days. This is known as one Cycle. Each cycle may be repeated up to four times if the disease is not metastatic. If the disease is metastatic, then each cycle may be repeated up to 6 times.

What is gemcitabine used for?

Gemcitabine is used in combination with cisplatin to treat a type of lung cancer (non-small cell lung cancer; NSCLC) that has spread to other parts of the body and cannot be treated with surgery.

How long can you stay on FOLFIRINOX?

showed that a therapy comprising 5-FU, leucovorin, oxaliplatin and irinotecan (FOLFIRINOX) increases OS up to 11.1 months rendering FOLFIRINOX the most effective regimen available [5].

What’s the difference between gemcitabine and espac-4?

In ESPAC-4, we chose the combination of gemcitabine and capecitabine (an orally active 5-fluoruracil prodrug) to compare with gemcitabine, as the combination had a higher objective response, increased progression-free survival, and increased overall survival in a meta-analysis of the two randomised trials compared with gemcitabine monotherapy.

Are there any adjuvants for resected pancreatic cancer?

We were directly involved in the ESPAC-1plus, ESPAC-1, ESPAC-3 (v1), and ESPAC-3 (v2) adjuvant trials of resected pancreatic cancer. We were also directly involved in the GemCap trial which compared the combination of gemcitabine and capecitabine to gemcitabine alone in advanced and metastatic pancreatic cancer.

Are there any inherited disorders of the pancreas?

Hereditary Pancreatitis. In some cases, pancreatitis is related to inherited abnormalities of the pancreas or intestine. Acute recurrent attacks of pancreatitis early in life (under age 30) can often progress to chronic pancreatitis. The most common inherited disorder that leads to chronic pancreatitis is cystic fibrosis.