A landmark trial establishes gemcitabine as a standard of care.
Pancreatic cancer is common and nearly always fatal. Surgery, the only curative option, yields poor long-term survival rates, and adjuvant therapy after surgery is controversial. Use of postoperative 5-fluorouracil (5-FU) combined with radiation is common practice in the U.S., whereas use of postoperative 5-FU without radiation has been supported by results from the recent European ESPAC-1 trial (N Engl J Med 2004; 350:1200).
Although gemcitabine is more active than 5-FU for treating advanced pancreatic cancer, gemcitabine has not been evaluated thoroughly in the adjuvant setting. In a pivotal randomized phase III trial, CONKO-001, conducted at 88 centers in Germany and Austria, 368 patients who underwent surgical resection of pancreatic ade…