Is gemcitabine (GEM)-based combination therapy good for the treatment of advanced pancreatic cancer?

[摘要] With great interest, we carefully read the recent paper by Dr. Zhang and colleagues published in Journal of Gastrointestinal Oncology (1). Chemotherapy is used widely in the treatment of patients with advanced pancreatic cancer (PC). As a synthetic analog of cytarabine, gemcitabine (GEM) is one of the most used chemotherapeutic drugs for PC. Many attempts have been made to increase the overall survival of patients with PC, in particular, by exploring the combination of GEM with other drugs. GEM-based chemotherapy was proposed as a standard therapy treatment for patients with unresectable PC. The study by Zhang et al. (1) which included 17 studies with a total of 5,197 patients, revealed that comparing with GEM alone, GEM-based combination therapy has better efficacy for advanced PC. Although GEM-based combination therapy can improve the overall survival, progression-free survival and overall response rate, there are more adverse events. Our aim with this letter is to address some shortcomings in this study.

[学科分类] 肿瘤学