Related Pages Search for Clinical Trials 1 NCI's PDQ® Cancer Clinical Trials Registry. Pancreatic Cancer Home Page 2 NCI's gateway for information about pancreatic cancer. Highlights from ASCO 2008 3 A collection of links to material summarizing some of the important clinical trial results announced at the 2008 annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO). Drug Information Summaries 4 NCI's drug information summaries provide consumer-friendly information about certain drugs that are approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to treat cancer or conditions related to cancer.

Adapted from the NCI Cancer Bulletin, vol. 5/no. 12, June 10, 2008 (see the current issue ⁵).

Less than 20 percent of patients with pancreatic cancer are candidates for surgery, because the disease is often detected in the late stages. Gemcitabine has been a standard treatment for patients with advanced (and inoperable) pancreatic cancer for a decade. The new findings support use of the drug in the adjuvant setting.

"We have shown that this treatment more than doubles the overall survival five years after treatment," said Dr. Helmut Oettle of the Charité School of Medicine in Berlin, Germany, who presented the results.

The study included 368 patients who underwent surgery followed by six months of adjuvant gemcitabine treatment or surgery alone. In the gemcitabine group, 21 percent were alive at five years compared with 9 percent in the control group. Median survival in the gemcitabine group was 22.8 months compared with 20.2 months in the control group.

Preliminary results from the trial were reported at ASCO in 2005 and showed that post-surgery gemcitabine could delay a recurrence of the disease. These findings led to an increase in the use of the drug in the United States and Europe, according to the researchers.

"We can now say that giving this agent after surgery to patients with early stage disease will improve a patient's survival," commented Dr. Nicholas Petrelli of the Helen F. Graham Cancer Center (Wilmington, Del.) at the meeting. "We couldn't say that before."

Glossary Terms

In a clinical trial, the group that does not receive the new treatment being studied. This group is compared to the group that receives the new treatment, to see if the new treatment works.

The time from either diagnosis or treatment at which half of the patients with a given disease are found to be, or expected to be, still alive. In a clinical trial, median survival time is one way to measure how effective a treatment is. Also called median overall survival and median survival.

A study in which the participants are assigned by chance to separate groups that compare different treatments; neither the researchers nor the participants can choose which group. Using chance to assign people to groups means that the groups will be similar and that the treatments they receive can be compared objectively. At the time of the trial, it is not known which treatment is best. It is the patient's choice to be in a randomized trial.

Cancer that has recurred (come back), usually after a period of time during which the cancer could not be detected. The cancer may come back to the same place as the original (primary) tumor or to another place in the body. Also called recurrent cancer.

In medicine, treatment that experts agree is appropriate, accepted, and widely used. Health care providers are obligated to provide patients with standard therapy. Also called best practice and standard of care.