Original Article
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Which patients with locally advanced pancreatic cancer treated with induction chemotherapy are most likely to benefit from post-induction chemoradiotherapy? | ||||||
Sophie Otter1, Irene Chong2, Ria Kalaitzaki3, Diana Tait2 | ||||||
1Clinical Research Fellow, Royal Marsden Hospital, UK 2Consultant Clinical Oncologist, Royal, Marsden, Hospital, UK 3Senior Statistician, Royal Marsden Hospital, UK | ||||||
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Otter S, Chong I, Kalaitzaki R, Tait D. Which patients with locally advanced pancreatic cancer treated with induction chemotherapy are most likely to benefit from post-induction chemoradiotherapy? Int J Hepatobiliary Pancreat Dis 2018;8:100077Z04SO2018. |
ABSTRACT
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Aims: The role of concomitant chemotherapy with radiotherapy (CRT) in locally advanced pancreatic cancer (LAPC) is controversial. The aim of this study was to report the outcomes of patients with LAPC treated with CRT over a 10-year period within a single institution and to identify those patients who derived the most benefit.
Keywords: Chemoradiotherapy, Pancreatic cancer, PET-CT | ||||||
INTRODUCTION
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Pancreatic cancer is the tenth most common cancer in the UK. In 2013, there were 9,408 new cases of pancreatic cancer. The 10-year survival in England and Wales from 2010–2011 was <1% [1]. Patients with locally advanced disease have an overall survival of 6–11 months [2]. In 1981, the Gastrointestinal Tumor Study Group showed that radiotherapy with bolus 5FU was superior to radiotherapy alone with a one year survival of 40% v. 10% [3]. However, there is still some controversy about the role of CRT (concomitant chemotherapy with radiotherapy) versus chemotherapy alone in the treatment of locally advanced pancreatic cancer (LAPC), largely due to differences in chemotherapy regimens, scheduling and duration. A phase three randomised controlled trial (LAP07) compared chemotherapy alone (gemcitabine +/- erlotinib) for six months with induction chemotherapy (gemcitabine +/- erlotinib) for four months followed by chemoradiotherapy (54Gy in 30# with capecitabine) [4]. There was no significant difference in overall survival (OS) between the chemotherapy and the chemoradiotherapy arms. The rate of local recurrence was lower in patients receiving chemoradiotherapy 32% vs 46%, p?=?0.03) and there was no increase in grade 3 or 4 toxicities. However, it should be noted that the induction chemotherapy was only for four months and that patients received gemcitabine alone rather than a doublet or triplet chemotherapy regimen. A meta-analysis in 2007 identified two randomised controlled trials which compared CRT followed by chemotherapy with chemotherapy alone where no improvement in OS in the CRT arm was observed (two trials, 134 patients, HR 0.79; 95% CI 0.32–1.95) [5]. A study undertaken by Chauffert et al. revealed a survival disadvantage for CRT compared to chemotherapy but incorporated a regimen of cisplatin and 5FU in combination with radiotherapy that was poorly tolerated and which would not be considered standard treatment [6]. However, there are other studies which suggest a positive role for radiotherapy in patients with LAPC [7], [8]. A phase two randomised trial of patients with LAPC (n=74) compared six cycles of gemcitabine with chemoradiotherapy (weekly gemcitabine, 50.4 Gy in 28#). There were more grade four and five toxicities (41% v 9%) in the CRT arm but grade 3 and 4 toxicities were similar. Survival in the chemotherapy arm was 9.2 months compared to 11.1 months in the chemoradiotherapy arm (p=0.017) [7]. Furthermore, three retrospective studies have reported an improvement in OS. Choi et al. reported that patients with unresectable LAPC who received concurrent CRT had a significantly improved OS of 15.4 months compared to 9.3 months in patients who had chemotherapy alone (p=0.011). HR for OS was 0.536 (p=0.003) [9]. Huang et al. also retrospectively identified a survival benefit for chemoradiotherapy over chemotherapy alone (OS 14.6 months v 8.1 months, p=0.001) [10]. The SCALOP trial was a phase 2 trial randomising patients to chemoradiotherapy with either gemcitabine or capecitabine after 16 weeks of induction gemcitabine and capecitabine chemotherapy. There was no control arm of continuing with chemotherapy alone but the results showed that the capecitabine regimen had an improvement in median OS of three months (although the HR was not significant) and was less toxic than the gemcitabine arm [11], [12]. SCALOP2 is currently recruiting and is investigating both dose escalation of radiotherapy to 60Gy in 30# and also the addition of nelfinavir (a protease inhibitor which inhibits the Akt/PKB pathway) to chemoradiotherapy [13]. The trial design includes a chemotherapy only arm and also an observation arm. The combination of novel drugs with radiotherapy and dose escalation will hopefully lead to further improved local control and overall survival. From the available literature, with conflicting results and an inability to demonstrate an overall role for CRT in LAPC, the benefit of CRT may be in a select group of patients and therefore selection criteria for CRT need to be better defined. We report the outcome data of 138 consecutive patients receiving CRT at a single institution. In addition, we focus on the utility of imaging response assessments after neo-adjuvant chemotherapy and changes in CA19-9 levels in an attempt to identify patients who had improved survival following chemoradiotherapy. | ||||||
MATERIALS AND METHODS
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Patients with LAPC who, after induction chemotherapy, were treated with radiotherapy at a dose of 45Gy or greater at a single institution between January 2004 – October 2014 were identified. Their Electronic Patient Record was reviewed to collect data regarding demographics, staging investigations, radiotherapy and chemotherapy details, response to treatment and outcome. Responders on imaging (PET-CT or CT) were defined as those patients who had either complete response (CR) or partial response (PR) using Response Evaluation Criteria in Solid Tumors (RECIST) criteria. Overall survival (OS) was defined as the time from radiotherapy start date to death from any cause whilst progression free survival (PFS) was measured from radiotherapy start date to date of progression or death from any cause. The start of radiotherapy was chosen as it was a more definitive time point particularly as some patients had been diagnosed at other institutions and may have received their induction chemotherapy elsewhere making the date of diagnosis more difficult to define. Patients without an event were censored at last follow up. The Kaplan-Meier method was used to summarise the survival estimates whilst Cox regression method was used to compare the survival rates between groups. CT imaging and CA 19-9 were routinely performed for staging and response assessment. PET was not used routinely for staging before 2008 and has not been a routine part of response assessment at our institution. | ||||||
RESULT
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Patient demographics and tumour staging
Treatment details
PET scans
Response on imaging and Survival Outcomes
CA19-9 Response and survival outcomes
Surgery
Patterns of recurrence following CRT
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DISCUSSION
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The incidence of pancreatic cancer is predicted to increase due to an increase in risk factors such as obesity and diabetes. This, coupled with the poor prognosis, means that it is a significant cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide. However, intriguingly there are some patients who do well and therefore this is a heterogeneous disease presenting challenges in selection for treatment approaches. The role of chemoradiotherapy remains controversial in the management of locally advanced pancreatic cancer but there is a subset of patients who appear to benefit and the aim of this retrospective study was to try to identify those patients. These patients may have an improved prognosis due to the molecular profile of their disease that could confer a more indolent phenotype facilitating the successful delivery of localised treatment. In this series, the patients that had particularly good outcomes after chemoradiotherapy were the 13 patients that showed an imaging response 3-month post-radiotherapy (median OS 56 months). 8 of these 13 went on to have a Whipple's procedure. Therefore, the role of CRT may be particularly important in downstaging a small group of LAPC patients thereby allowing them to proceed to surgery. However, the next conundrum is how to identify these patients upfront that are initially felt to be locally advanced but over the course of chemotherapy and CRT become operable. It may be that surgery should be the ultimate goal of using chemoradiotherapy in LAPC as other studies have also demonstrated better survival in patients able to undergo surgery following chemoradiation. A multicentre UK retrospective study reported improved survival (27 m v 6m, p=0.023) in patients undergoing resection [14]. However, surgery is not an option for the majority of patients as was seen in a further retrospective series in which only 1 of 54 patients proceeded to resection [15]. This latter study was small but there is a large systematic review of 111 studies which has shown that approximately one third of patients deemed to have unresectable disease at diagnosis, became resectable after neoadjuvant treatment and had comparable survival to those patients who had been deemed to be resectable upfront [16]. The rationale for intensifying local treatment, such as surgery or radiotherapy is supported in our study with 24% of relapsing patients having local disease only. As far as radiotherapy is concerned, there are a number of approaches that might be used to reduce local recurrence rates and dose escalation is now a reality using more advanced radiotherapy techniques. For example, patients treated with higher doses (BED >70 Gy) achieved with intensity modulated radiotherapy (IMRT) and simultaneous integrated boost, have a superior OS (17.8 vs 15.0 months, p=0.03) [17]. IMRT together with image guided radiotherapy (IGRT) may allow greater certainty in terms of tumour localization and accuracy of delivery, and therefore permit a safe reduction in radiotherapy planning margins [18]. The precision of tumor delineation also needs to be taken into consideration as there is considerable variability of tumour outlining between oncologists even in trials such as the SCALOP trial where there was a clearly defined protocol [19]. Other imaging modalities such as PET-CT may allow more accurate target delineation and therefore improve local control [20]. Pre-chemoradiotherapy PET-CT parameters (SUVmax <6.2) has also been shown to predict patients that are less likely to metastasise and therefore may benefit most from local treatment intensification [21]. Treatment delivery may also be further improved with the introduction of the MR linear accelerator. This, combined with diagnostic and planning MRs, may increase target volume and treatment delivery certainty. Other approaches that allow radiotherapy dose escalation include Stereotactic body radiotherapy (SBRT) [18], [19]. SBRT in 3–5 fractions either preceding or following systemic chemotherapy has been shown in non-randomised studies to improve local control rates with an acceptable toxicity profile [22],[23]. Although there was a significant local only relapse rate (24%) in our series, as expected, the majority of patients relapsed with systemic disease. This emphasises the importance of considering this disease as a systemic problem and the need to also look at ways of improving systemic therapy. For example, there may be a role for maintenance chemotherapy. This approach has already shown promise in patients who have had their pancreatic cancer resected and who had an improved survival, compared with adjuvant chemotherapy alone, by the introduction of maintenance chemotherapy [22]. As yet, there are no phase III trials to provide definitive evidence for this approach and, similarly, other strategies to reduce distant metastases might involve novel drugs in combination with conventional chemotherapy. Overall, our results confirm that imaging response after induction chemotherapy and post chemoradiation, predicts for improved PFS and OS. High resolution imaging, including MRI, may provide an even finer handle on the impact of treatment on tumour structure and function. However, the presented results on the role of CA19-9 don't support the use of marker-response as a reliable means of identifying good outcomes, at least after induction chemotherapy. The better outcomes for patients demonstrating a fall in CA19-9 after chemoradiation doesn't help in selecting patients for Chemoradiotherapy but may help in discussions on prognosis after treatment. Although this study has limitations including its retrospective nature and limited size, it represents a valuable resource describing our experience in treating patients with locally advanced pancreatic cancer over the last decade. There has been a consistent approach of aiming to deliver 6 months of neoadjuvant chemotherapy prior to chemoradiation and the present population provides a significant sample size for this strategy. Furthermore, the reported population is representative of the LAPC cancer population as a whole, rather than just those selected for trial inclusion. However, in order to fully determine the contribution of chemoradiotherapy to the outcome of these patients, a control arm of patients who received no chemoradiotherapy would be needed. This would therefore determine whether the patients who responded well to induction chemotherapy would have continued to have an improved survival with or without CRT. | ||||||
CONCLUSION
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In this study, we observed that patients who responded to induction chemotherapy on imaging, prior to radiotherapy, achieved an improved PFS and OS compared with non-responders and appeared to derive the greatest benefit from CRT. It seems reasonable, therefore, to suggest that radiological response following induction chemotherapy could be useful in the selection of patients for subsequent CRT. Although we cannot definitively conclude that the addition of CRT contributed to these improved outcomes, it would be worthwhile to prospectively evaluate the utility of imaging response following induction chemotherapy as a radiological biomarker to stratify patients for subsequent local therapy. | ||||||
REFERENCES
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Author Contributions
Sophie Otter – Substantial contributions to conception and design, Acquisition of data, Analysis and interpretation of data, Drafting the article, Revising it critically for important intellectual content, Final approval of the version to be published Irene Chong – Substantial contributions to conception and design, Acquisition of data, Analysis and interpretation of data, Drafting the article, Revising it critically for important intellectual content, Final approval of the version to be published Ria Kalaitzaki – Substantial contributions to conception and design, Acquisition of data, Analysis and interpretation of data, Drafting the article, Revising it critically for important intellectual content, Final approval of the version to be published Diana Tait – Substantial contributions to conception and design, Acquisition of data, Analysis and interpretation of data, Drafting the article, Revising it critically for important intellectual content, Final approval of the version to be published |
Guarantor of Submission
The corresponding author is the guarantor of submission. |
Source of Support
None |
Conflict of Interest
Authors declare no conflict of interest. |
Copyright
© 2018 Sophie Otter et al. This article is distributed under the terms of Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium provided the original author(s) and original publisher are properly credited. Please see the copyright policy on the journal website for more information. |
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