Adjuvant treatments for resectable pancreatic cancer

Pancreatic cancer remains one of the most challenging malignancies to treat successfully. The majority of patients present with unresectable advanced-stage cancer, and only 20% of patients can undergo resection. Even if surgical resection is performed, the recurrence rate is high and the survival rate after surgery is poor. Therefore, effective adjuvant therapy is needed to improve the prognosis of patients with pancreatic cancer. Until now, no universally accepted standard adjuvant therapy for this disease has been available: chemoradiotherapy followed by chemotherapy is considered the optimal therapy in the United States, while chemotherapy alone is the current standard in Europe. However, recent randomized controlled trials (RTOG [Radiation Therapy Oncology Group] 9704; CONKO [Charité Onkologie]-001; and a Japanese study) have suggested a benefit of adjuvant chemotherapy with gemcitabine for patients with resectable pancreatic cancer. This article will review the clinical trials of adjuvant therapy for this disease, including the results of recent trials.