Research update
23 May 2013
Results of an EORTC study recently published in The Journal of Clinical Oncology show that gender is an independent prognostic indicator for progression and survival in patients with advanced stage metastatic melanoma. A previous EORTC study had already shown that women have a consistent and independent advantage in all aspects of the progression of localized (stage I and II) melanoma, and these...
14 May 2013
Surgical resection is considered a potentially curative treatment for pancreatic adenocarcinoma, however, the five year survival rate of patients receiving this treatment is less than 20 percent. Adjuvant treatment, therefore, is used to prevent recurrence and improve survival for these patients.
EORTC trial 40084-22084 has two primary objectives: to determine if adding erlotinib to gemcitabine...
10 May 2013
The EORTC will present thirteen abstracts at the ASCO 2013 Annual Meeting which will be held 31 May – 04 June 2013 in Chicago, Illinois. All thirteen of the EORTC’s submitted abstracts were accepted for presentation: four abstracts will be presented in Oral Abstract Sessions, one in a Clinical Science Symposium, two in Poster Discussion Sessions, and five in General Poster Sessions....
06 May 2013
Non-small cell lung cancers (NSCLCs) are not only a fairly frequent form of cancer, but they also have a poor prognosis. Worldwide, there are over one million new cases of lung cancer diagnosed each year. Roughly 80% of these are NSCLCs, and the five year survival rate for these patients is not more than 14%. Furthermore, disease-free survival for patients with surgically removed NSCLC which has...
29 April 2013
Early stage breast cancer is potentially curable, yet some patients still relapse even though they have had optimal treatment. It is thought that these patients relapse due to the presence of micro metastatic cells that cannot be detected by the imaging or conventional laboratory tests used following completion of the standard treatment. Recent studies have shown that the presence of circulating...
24 April 2013
In Europe, approximately 40 percent of patients with colorectal cancer (CRC) are older than 74 years when first diagnosed, and given increasing life expectancies, the number of elderly patients with CRC will likely increase. For patients with advanced CRC, combination chemotherapy with oxaliplatin or irinotecan has shown superior efficacy compared with 5-fluorouracil/leucovorin alone, but it also...
26 March 2013
Successive EORTC trials have registered continuous progress in the development of treatment strategies for Hodgkin’s lymphoma. These trials have not only improved treatment efficacy, but have also identified clinical and biological parameters that could be used to adapt the treatment strategy.
The greatly improved outcomes resulting from the earlier trials meant that subsequent trials could...
16 January 2013
Survival rates are lower for patients with ulcerated as opposed to non-ulcerated melanomas of a similar tumor category, showing a possible different biological behavior. It was observed in prior EORTC adjuvant trials that patients with ulcerated primary melanoma and none or minimal lymph nodal involvement treated with either pegylated interferon α-2b (PEG-IFN- α-2b) – EORTC trial 18991...
11 January 2013
Approximately half of all non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients are diagnosed at an advanced stage, and the treatment option for these patients is palliative chemotherapy. It has been shown that palliative chemotherapy can lead to improvements in survival and quality-of-life measures, but due to cumulative toxicity, guidelines limit the duration of treatment with currently available agents...
03 January 2013
EORTC trial 18081
Adjuvant peginterferon alpha-2b for 2 years vs Observation in patients with an ulcerated primary cutaneous melanoma with T(2-4)bN0M0: a randomized phase III trial of the EORTC Melanoma Group
Target Accrual: 1200 patientsStudy Coordinator: Alessandro Testori - Istituto Europeo Di Oncologia, Milano
EORTC trial 90101 - CREATE
Cross-tumoral Phase 2 clinical...
