Adjuvant therapy in pancreatic cancer

Pancreatic cancer is one of the major causes of cancer death in Europe with a 5-year survival rate of less than 5%. Although surgery cannot guarantee a cure, the 5-year survival does improve to around 10% following resection and increases to 20-30% with adjuvant chemotherapy. The European Study Group for Pancreatic Cancer (ESPAC) 1 trial was the first adequately powered, randomized study to assess chemoradiotherapy (CRT), concurrent with 5-fluorouracil (5-FU) and chemotherapy [5-FU/folinic acid (FA)] in resected pancreatic cancer. There was a survival benefit for adjuvant chemotherapy, but not for adjuvant CRT. Adjuvant CRT also did not improve survival in the EORTC multicenter prospective randomized trial by Klinkenbijl et al. (1999). The phase 3 RTOG 9704 trial compared pre- and postchemoradiation gemcitabine to pre- and postchemoradiation 5-FU. Overall there was no difference in overall survival between the 2 arms. Adjuvant gemcitabine significantly improved disease-free survival and later overall survival compared to surgery alone in the CONKO-001 randomized trial. The ESPAC-3(v2) trial compared adjuvant gemcitabine versus 5-FU/FA. The final 2-year analysis demonstrated median survival from resection of patients treated with 5-FU/FA was 23.0 months (95% CI: 21.1, 25.0) and 23.6 months (95% CI: 21.4, 26.4) for patients treated with gemcitabine. Further randomized studies will assess the role of adjuvant combination chemotherapy (ESPAC-4). The key to the future of adjuvant therapy in pancreatic cancer will be the identification of novel and effective agents, and better biomarker technology underpinned by translational research which will inform the design of future trials.