Efficacy and Safety of FOLFIRI after Failure of FOLFOX-4 in Advanced Gastric Cancer / 대한소화기학회지

BACKGROUND/AIMS: The purpose of this study was to investigate the efficacy and safety of irinotecan based FOLFIRI chemotherapy as a second-line treatment after failure of FOLFOX-4 chemotherapy in patients with advanced gastric cancer. METHODS: Fifty-two patients who were pathologically diagnosed with unresectable gastric cancer and received FOLFIRI chemotherapy after failure of FOLFOX-4 chemotherapy between September 2005 and February 2012 were enrolled in this study. Data were collected by retrospectively reviewing the medical records. The response to chemotherapy was assessed every 3 cycles by World Health Organization criteria and long term survival was analyzed. The toxicities were evaluated for every course of chemotherapy according to National Cancer Institution (NCI) toxicity criteria version 3.0. RESULTS: Median age of the patients was 57 years. Median overall survival (OS) and time to progression (TTP) were 7.8 and 5 months, respectively. The number of patients showing complete remission, partial remission, stable disease, and progressive disease were 0 (0.0%), 9 (17.3%), 30 (57.7%), and 13 (25.0%), respectively. The overall response rate was 17.3%. During a total of 345 cycles, anemia worse than NCI toxicity grade 3 occurred in 2.9%, leukopenia in 20.3%, neutropenia in 12.2%, and thrombocytopenia in 1.5%. Patients with less organ involvement by metastasis, less than 34 U/mL of CA 19-9 and good responsiveness to third cycle of second line chemotherapy were associated with longer OS and TTP. CONCLUSIONS: FOLFIRI chemotherapy has a modest efficacy with acceptable toxicities in patients with advanced gastric cancer as a second-line treatment. Further well-controlled studies are needed to elucidate the efficacy of FOLFIRI chemotherapy as second-line treatment in patients with advanced stomach cancer.

Polymorphisms of UGT1A1*6, UGT1A1*27 & UGT1A1*28 in three major ethnic groups from Malaysia.

Background & objectives: Genetic polymorphisms of uridine diphosphate glucuronyltransferase 1A1 (UGT1A1) have been associated with a wide variation of responses among patients prescribed with irinotecan. Lack of this enzyme is known to be associated with a high incidence of severe toxicity. The objective of this study was to investigate the prevalence of three different variants of UGT1A1 (UGT1A1*6, UGT1A1*27 and UGT1A1*28), which are associated with reduced enzyme activity and increased irinotecan toxicity, in the three main ethnic groups in Malaysia (Malays, Chinese and Indians). Methods: A total of 306 healthy unrelated volunteers were screened for UGT1A1*28, UGT1A1*6 and UGT1A1*27. Blood samples (5 ml) were obtained from each subject and DNA was extracted. PCR based methods were designed and validated for detection of UGT1A1*6, UGT1A1*27 and UGT1A1*28. Direct DNA sequencing was performed to validate the results of randomly selected samples. Results: Malays and Indian have two-fold higher frequency of homozygous of UGT1A1*28 (7TA/7TA) which was 8 and 8.8 per cent, respectively compared to the Chinese (4.9%). However, the distribution of UGT1A1*6 and UGT1A1*27 showed no significant differences among them. UGT1A1*27 which has not been detected in Caucasian and African American population, was found in the Malaysian Malays (3.33%) and Malaysian Chinese (2.0%). Interpretation & conclusions: There was interethnic variability in the frequency of UGT1A1*28 in the Malaysian population. Our results suggest that genotyping of UGT1A1*6, UGT1A1*28 and UGT1A1*27 need to be performed before patients are prescribed with irinotecan due to their high prevalence of allelic variant which could lead to adverse drug reaction.

FOLFIRI chemotherapy for metastatic colorectal cancer patients.

OBJECTIVES: 1) To confirm the efficacy of irinotecan plus folinic acid/continuous 5-fluorouracil as bimonthly FOLFIRI regimen in metastatic colorectal cancer patients. Efficacy evaluations will include response rate, duration of response, and survival. 2) To evaluate safety profiles on patients receiving this combination. MATERIAL AND METHOD: Nineteen patients with metastatic colorectal cancer received 180 mg/m2 intravenous (iv) day 1 of irinotecan, 200 mg/m2 iv of folinic acid, 400 mg/m2 iv bolus days 1 to 2, 5-fluorouracil (5-FU), and 600 mg/m2 iv 5-FU infusion over 22 hours, days 1 to 2. Treatment was repeated every two weeks and one cycle contained three fortnightly administrations. Sites of disease were liver in nine patients, lungs in three patients, bowels in four patients, lymph nodes in three patients, and peritoneum in two patients. Two patients had > 1 metastatic site. Previous treatments included adjuvant chemotherapy in seven cases and front-line chemotherapy for advanced disease in one case. RESULTS: A median of six treatment cycles was completed (range, 2-13 cycles). All patients were assessable for toxicity and 16 patients were evaluable for treatment response. The non-hematological toxicity was mild. Most had grade 1 or 2. Only one patient experienced grade 3 fatigue and anorexia, and discontinued chemotherapy after the second cycle. There were no cases with grade 4 toxicity. Fourteen patients had at least grade 2 alopecia. The most common hematological toxicity was neutropenia. Grade 3 and 4 neutropenia were observed in three and two patients, respectively. There was no case of febrile neutropenia. Based on intention to treat analysis, there were no complete responses (CR), five (26.3%) partial response (PR), and 11 (57.9%) stable disease. With the median follow-up of 6.6 months, the median time to disease progression was 4.7 months and the median survival time was 10.6 months. CONCLUSION: Bimonthly irinotecan in combination with folinic acid and 5-fluorouracil was active with acceptable toxicities and a prolonged survival time in pretreated colorectal cancer. Additional trials to define the optimal dose and schedule of treatment are justified.

Una variedad genética de la UDP-glucuronosil transferasa asociada a toxicidad gastrointestinal por irinotecan / A prevalent genetic variety of UDP-glycuronosyl transferase predicts high risk of irinotecan toxicity

Los avances en genética y biología molecular han impulsado la aparición de nuevas áreas de estudio en la medicina, como la farmacogenómica, la cual intenta predecir la respuesta y toxicidad a drogas en función de la variabilidad genética de cada individuo, constituyendo los llamados síndromes fármacogenómicos. La oncología podría beneficiarse debido a la gran toxicidad de sus fármacos. Hay varios loci genéticos que se están analizando por su potencial valor predictivo y hasta ahora sólo tres de ellos demostraron cierto grado de utilidad clínica. En especial, el estudio del número de repeticiones del dinucleótido timina-adenina (TA) en el promotor de la enzima UDP-glucuronosil-transferasa (UGT) mostró ser capaz de predecir neutropenia severa en pacientes expuestos a dosis intermedias y altas de irinotecan. Comunicamos el caso de una paciente con cáncer de pulmón de células pequeñas que padeció toxicidad hematológica y gastrointestinal grave tras haber sido tratada con dosis relativamente bajas (65 mg/m2) de irinotecan, y en quien un análisis del ADN leucocitario mostró la presencia de homocigosis para siete repeticiones de TA. Este caso es un ejemplo de aplicabilidad clínica del test, se discute su utilidad como predictor de toxicidad y la conducta a tomar frente a pacientes con estas características.

The advances in genetics and molecular biology have raised new areas in medicine, such as pharmacogenomics, which tries to predict drug responses and toxicities based on the individual genetic variability, describing the so called: pharmacogenomic syndromes. Oncology would find this development extremely useful because of the severe toxicity of chemotherapy. There are a lot of genetic loci under investigation for their potential in predicting drug toxicity, but only three of them have showed clinical usefulness up to now. In particular, quantification of the number of thymine-adenine (TA) dinucleotics in the promoter region of the UDP-glucuronosyl-transferase 1A1 enzime (TA indel) proved to be capable of predicting severe neutropenia in patients exposed to intermediate or high doses of irinotecan. Herein we report a case of a patient with small cell lung cancer who suffered severe hematological and gastrointestinal toxicity after being treated with relatively low doses (65 mg/m2) of irinotecan and whose leucocyte DNA analysis showed the presence of seven TA repetitions in both alleles. This case is an example of the clinical applicability and the utility of the test as a toxicity predictor. We also discuss the clinical decisions that may be taken with these patients.