8% and a DCR of 52.8%. Median PFS and OS were 3.8 months and 6.2 months, respectively. To our knowledge, this is one of the largest series presented so far with second-line chemotherapy combination in non-Asian patients. In the second-line setting, only two recent studies exploring the benefit of palliative chemotherapy were presented in full text. The Arbeitsgemeinschaft Internistische Onkologie

(AIO) conducted in Germany analyzed single agent 4SC-202 price irinotecan (250 mg/m2 every 3 weeks, increased to 350 mg/m2 after the first cycle depending on toxicity) versus BSC [12]. Primary endpoint was OS. Even though the hazard ratio for death was 0.48 (95% CI 0.25–0.92), results must be interpreted with caution. Only

40 patients of the preplanned 120 entered the study, which closed prematurely due to poor accrual. Regarding efficacy, no objective tumor responses were documented, and disease stabilization for at least 6 weeks was reported in 53% of patients. We are aware of the intrinsic limitations of both retrospective studies and indirect comparisons. In our study, patient characteristics were similar, with the exception that in the AIO study none of the patients allocated in the irinotecan arm received docetaxel in first-line. However, even though the DCR was similar (52.8% vs 53%), we reported an ORR of 22.8%. Apparently, FOLFIRI compares favorably when considering PFS (3.8 months oxyclozanide vs 2.5 months)

and OS (6.2 months vs 4.0 months). check details Surprisingly, FOLFIRI seemed to be better tolerated than irinotecan monotherapy (G3-4 diarrhea 14.4% vs 26%, neutropenic fever 4% vs 16%), probably because of the lower irinotecan cumulative dose and the different schedule. In the second phase III trial, 202 Korean patients were randomized in a 2:1 fashion to receive either chemotherapy, consisting in biweekly irinotecan 150 mg/m2 or docetaxel 60 mg/m2 every 3 weeks at the physician’s discretion, or BSC [13]. Docetaxel-containing chemotherapy was administered only in the 3% of patients. The intention to treat analysis showed an increase in OS with chemotherapy (5.3 months vs 3.8 months) with a HR of 0.657 (95% CI: 0.485-0.891, P = 0.007). No differences were seen in correlation with the type of chemotherapeutic agent, thus complementing the results from the Japanese phase III WJOG4007 study (reported only in abstract form) and from an European, randomized, three-arm phase II study which also evaluated a liposomal nanocarrier BAY 80-6946 in vivo formulation of irinotecan [19, 20]. Even though these results have to be considered as a major step forward in the management of gastric cancer, we believe they cannot be broadly generalized. It is known that the topographic distribution (distal vs proximal), pathological features (intestinal vs diffuse) and, even more importantly, survival outcome differ between Asian and Western patients [14, 21, 22].