Pooled results of two phase-III trials have shown that stomach and oesophageal cancer patients treated with oral chemotherapy Xeloda (capecitabine) lived approximately one month longer than those that were treated with infused intravenous (IV) 5FU/FA. The individual trials compared capecitabine with the previous standard IV 5-FU/FA, in chemotherapy combinations for the treatment of incurable stomach and oesophageal cancer. The results were presented today at the European Society of Medical Oncology (ESMO).
"The fact that this analysis shows capecitabine to be superior for overall survival to IV 5-FU in chemotherapy combinations for advanced oesophageal and stomach cancers is welcome news for patients," said Professor David Cunningham, Department of Medicine, The Royal Marsden Hospital, Surrey, United Kingdom. "Intravenous 5-FU based regimens can be burdensome for patients because they require additional hospital visits during the treatment cycle and are usually given via a pump that the patient has to wear at home. Capecitabine appears to offer a survival advantage in addition to the convenience of a tablet that can be taken at home. These data provide further evidence that capecitabine can replace IV 5-FU in combination chemotherapy regimens in the treatment of stomach and oesophageal cancers."
Stomach cancer is a particularly aggressive and debilitating type of cancer. It is the second leading cause of cancer worldwide, after lung cancer, causing an estimated 866,000 deaths worldwide each year, two and nearly 140,000 deaths in Europe alone.
"These new data from ESMO confirm what we have seen in previous studies: that capecitabine can replace intravenous 5-FU in the treatment of a number of serious gastrointestinal cancers because it may offer better survival coupled with improved patient acceptability", Prof Cunningham concluded.
Xeloda is approved in Europe in combination with platinum based chemotherapy in first-line treatment of advanced stomach cancer. The most commonly reported treatment-related adverse reactions are gastrointestinal disorders (especially diarrhoea, nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain, stomatitis), fatigue and hand-foot syndrome (palmar-plantar erythrodysaesthesia).
Since its first licence for advanced breast cancer in 1998, capecitabine has been proven to be a highly effective and well tolerated treatment for over 1.5 million breast, colon, colorectal and stomach cancer patients worldwide.
Xeloda is a highly effective targeted oral chemotherapy offering patients a survival advantage when taken on its own or in combination with other anticancer drugs.
Headquartered in Basel, Switzerland, Roche is one of the world's leading research-focused healthcare groups in the fields of pharmaceuticals and diagnostics.
The Royal Marsden Hospital was the first hospital in the world dedicated to cancer treatment and research into the causes of cancer.