BACKGROUND In a phase 1–2 trial of albumin-bound paclitaxel (nab-paclitaxel) plus gemcitabine, substantial clinical activity was noted in patients with advanced pancreatic cancer. We conducted a phase 3 study of the efficacy and safety of the combination versus gemcitabine monotherapy in patients with metastatic pancreatic cancer. METHODS We randomly assigned patients with a Karnofsky performance-status score of 70 or more (on a scale from 0 to 100, with higher scores indicating better performance status) to nab-paclitaxel (125 mg per square meter of body-surface area) followed by gemcitabine (1000 mg per square meter) on days 1, 8, and 15 every 4 weeks or gemcitabine monotherapy (1000 mg per square meter) weekly for 7 of 8 weeks (cycle 1) and then on days 1, 8, and 15 every 4 weeks (cycle 2 and subsequent cycles). Patients received the study treatment until disease progression. The primary end point was overall survival; secondary end points were progression-free survival and overall response rate. RESULTS A total of 861 patients were randomly assigned to nab-paclitaxel plus gemcitabine (431 patients) or gemcitabine (430). The median overall survival was 8.5 months in the nab-paclitaxel–gemcitabine group as compared with 6.7 months in the gemcitabine group (hazard ratio for death, 0.72; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.62 to 0.83; P<0.001). The survival rate was 35% in the nab-paclitaxel–gemcitabine group versus 22% in the gemcitabine group at 1 year, and 9% versus 4% at 2 years. The median progression-free survival was 5.5 months in the nab-paclitaxel–gemcitabine group, as compared with 3.7 months in the gemcitabine group (hazard ratio for disease progression or death, 0.69; 95% CI, 0.58 to 0.82; P<0.001); the response rate according to independent review was 23% versus 7% in the two groups (P<0.001). The most common adverse events of grade 3 or higher were neutropenia (38% in the nab-paclitaxel–gemcitabine group vs. 27% in the gemcitabine group), fatigue (17% vs. 7%), and neuropathy (17% vs. 1%). Febrile neutropenia occurred in 3% versus 1% of the patients in the two groups. In the nab-paclitaxel–gemcitabine group, neuropathy of grade 3 or higher improved to grade 1 or lower in a median of 29 days. CONCLUSIONS In patients with metastatic pancreatic adenocarcinoma, nab-paclitaxel plus gemcitabine significantly improved overall survival, progression-free survival, and response rate, but rates of peripheral neuropathy and myelosuppression were increased. (Funded by Celgene; ClinicalTrials.gov number, NCT00844649.)

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Increased Survival in Pancreatic Cancer with nab-Paclitaxel plus Gemcitabine

Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) have been recently employed to solve problems from both the computer vision and medical image analysis fields. Despite their popularity, most approaches are only able to process 2D images while most medical data used in clinical practice consists of 3D volumes. In this work we propose an approach to 3D image segmentation based on a volumetric, fully convolutional, neural network. Our CNN is trained end-to-end on MRI volumes depicting prostate, and learns to predict segmentation for the whole volume at once. We introduce a novel objective function, that we optimise during training, based on Dice coefficient. In this way we can deal with situations where there is a strong imbalance between the number of foreground and background voxels. To cope with the limited number of annotated volumes available for training, we augment the data applying random non-linear transformations and histogram matching. We show in our experimental evaluation that our approach achieves good performances on challenging test data while requiring only a fraction of the processing time needed by other previous methods.

V-Net: Fully Convolutional Neural Networks for Volumetric Medical Image Segmentation

BackgroundPatients with recurrent or metastatic squamous-cell carcinoma of the head and neck after platinum chemotherapy have a very poor prognosis and limited therapeutic options. Nivolumab, an anti–programmed death 1 (PD-1) monoclonal antibody, was assessed as treatment for this condition. MethodsIn this randomized, open-label, phase 3 trial, we assigned, in a 2:1 ratio, 361 patients with recurrent squamous-cell carcinoma of the head and neck whose disease had progressed within 6 months after platinum-based chemotherapy to receive nivolumab (at a dose of 3 mg per kilogram of body weight) every 2 weeks or standard, single-agent systemic therapy (methotrexate, docetaxel, or cetuximab). The primary end point was overall survival. Additional end points included progression-free survival, rate of objective response, safety, and patient-reported quality of life. ResultsThe median overall survival was 7.5 months (95% confidence interval [CI], 5.5 to 9.1) in the nivolumab group versus 5.1 months (95% CI, 4.0 to...

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Nivolumab for Recurrent Squamous-Cell Carcinoma of the Head and Neck

Bevacizumab plus Irinotecan,Fluorouracil,and Leucovorin for Metastatic Colorectal Cancer

EAU–ESTRO–SIOG Guidelines on Prostate Cancer. Part 1: Screening, Diagnosis, and Local Treatment with Curative Intent

Most endometrial cancers are diagnosed at stage I (disease limited to the uterine corpus). The definitive treatment for endometrial carcinoma consists in total abdominal hysterectomy and bilateral salpingo-oophorectomy with or without lymphadenectomy. The decision of adjuvant treatment depends on risk factors. Postoperative radiotherapy plays a major role in the management of stage I endometrial cancer but the respective place of external radiotherapy and vaginal brachytherapy remains controversial. Adjuvant external beam radiotherapy reduces locoregional recurrences, but carries a risk of toxicity without overall survival benefits. Recent data suggest that vaginal brachytherapy is effective in preventing vaginal recurrence with lower toxicity and should be the treatment of choice for intermediate risk endometrial cancer.

Cancer de l'endomètre de stade I

French study of dose escalation from 66 to 80 GY with 3D-CRT in prostate cancer: results at 5 years

https://journals.viamedica.pl/rpor/article/download/72968/53059

Exclusive radiotherapy for non-small cell lung cancer. A retrospective multicentric study

Mapping of failures after radiochemotherapy in patients with non-metastatic esophageal cancer: A posteriori analysis of the dose distribution in the sites of loco-regional relapse

To determine whether dose/volume specific endpoints (DVSE) or Area under the rectal DVH curve (rAUC) better predict acute gastrointestinal (GI) toxicity in prostate cancer patients treated with IMRT in the era of daily image guidance (IG-IMRT). A set of DVSE was recorded from V25 to V75 (increments of 5Gy) (both in % and in cc) for 180 men. The rAUC was calculated for doses ranging between 25Gy and 50Gy (rAUC25–50). Univariate and multivariate logistic regressions were performed to determine the relationship between DVSE or rAUC25–50 and the appearance of any acute GI toxicity. The rates of acute grade 1 (G1), G2 and G3 GI toxicities were 53.3 %, 10.6 % and 1.1 %, respectively. No G4+ toxicity was observed. Rectal V25 to V75 expressed in % were not predictive of G ≥ 1 GI toxicity (p ≥ 0.12) whereas rectal V25 to V50 expressed in cc did correlate with GI toxicity G ≥ 1 (p ≤ 0.04). rAUC25–50 expressed in cc. Gy correlated significantly with the occurrence of any acute GI toxicity G ≥ 1 (p = 0.027). The absolute volume of the rectum between 25Gy and 50Gy and rAUC25–50 could significantly predict any acute rectal toxicity in prostate cancer patients treated with daily IG-IMRT.

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Philippe Maingon

Papers

Cancer de l'endomètre de stade I

French study of dose escalation from 66 to 80 GY with 3D-CRT in prostate cancer: results at 5 years

Exclusive radiotherapy for non-small cell lung cancer. A retrospective multicentric study

Mapping of failures after radiochemotherapy in patients with non-metastatic esophageal cancer: A posteriori analysis of the dose distribution in the sites of loco-regional relapse

Absolute volume of the rectum and AUC from rectal DVH between 25Gy and 50Gy predict acute gastrointestinal toxicity with IG-IMRT in prostate cancer