A randomised, phase III trial found that people who received chemotherapy with radiation (chemoradiotherapy) before pancreatic cancer surgery had better disease-free survival than those who started their treatment with surgery, which is the current standard of care.

In addition, the two-year survival rate was higher for those who received chemoradiotherapy before surgery (42% vs. 30%).

The preliminary findings of this trial show that chemoradiotherapy before surgery may be beneficial for patients with pancreatic cancer.

The study will be featured in a press briefing today and presented at the 2018 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Annual Meeting.

“This is the first randomised clinical trial to show that pre-operative treatment improves outcomes for people with early stages of pancreatic cancer who can have surgery,” said principal investigator Geertjan Van Tienhoven, MD, PhD, radiation oncologist at the Department of Radiation Oncology, Academic Medical Centre in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. 

“We believe that this may be a practice-changing trial.”

About the Study

The PREOPANC-1 trial enrolled 246 patients with pancreatic cancer that can be surgically removed.

The patients were randomly assigned to receive immediate surgery or chemoradiotherapy for 10 weeks, followed by surgery. Both treatment groups also received chemotherapy after surgery, and the total amount of chemotherapy given was equal in both groups.

(The chemoradiotherapy group received part of the chemotherapy before surgery and the rest after.)

Key Findings

The median overall survival was 17.1 months with preoperative chemoradiotherapy compared to 13.7 months (p=0.074) with immediate surgery.

The time until pancreatic cancer recurrence was longer with preoperative therapy, as well (9.9 months vs. 7.9 months, p=0.023).

The chance of surviving longer than two years was also higher with pre-operative treatment than with immediate surgery (42% vs. 30%).

In the subset of patients in which the tumour was surgically removed successfully, the difference in median survival was even greater: 42.1 months with preoperative treatment vs. 16.8 months with immediate surgery.

In pancreatic cancer, the disease and the patient’s condition can worsen so rapidly that even though surgery is attempted, removal of the tumour (resection) is not possible.

Also, despite treatment, mortality among a proportion of patients remains high in the first several months after diagnosis.

Resection was performed in 72% of patients in the immediate surgery group and 62% in the chemoradiotherapy group.

Among the patients who had a resection, the tumour was microscopically completely removed in a greater proportion of patients who received preoperative treatment (63% vs. 31%).

Next Steps

According to the authors, after the final analysis and publication of this trial, the next step is to attempt to find even more effective preoperative treatments. 

FOLFIRINOX chemotherapy or FOLFIRINOX combined with stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT, a specialised treatment that delivers a high dose of radiation precisely to the tumour, while sparing surrounding tissue from damage) appear promising from other studies and should be tested against pre- operative gemcitabine and radiation in a randomised clinical trial.

Source: ASCO 2018