A phase I pharmacokinetic study of hypoxic abdominal stop-flow perfusion with gemcitabine in patients with advanced pancreatic cancer and refractory malignant ascites Kuemmerle A et al. - Regional exposure to gemcitabine—the current standard drug for advanced adenocarcinoma of the pancreas—can be markedly enhanced using an optimised hypoxic stop-flow perfusion technique, with acceptable toxicities up to a dose of 1,125 mg/m^2. However, the activity of gemcitabine under hypoxic conditions is not as firmly established as that of other drugs such as mitomycin C, melphalan or tirapazamine. Further studies of this investigational modality, but with bioreductive drugs, are therefore warranted first to evaluate the tolerance in a phase I study and later on to assess whether it does improve the response to chemotherapy. [more...]
