Is There a Precise Adjuvant Therapy for Esophagogastric Carcinoma?

Abstract

Esophagogastric cancer remains a leading cause of cancer-related mortality worldwide. The prognosis for patients with locally advanced disease is poor and the majority of patients with operable tumors treated with surgery alone will have recurrent disease. A multimodal approach to treatment with adjunctive chemotherapy or chemoradiotherapy is therefore the standard of care for these patients. However, there is no global consensus on the optimal treatment strategy and international guidelines vary. National clinical trials inform local practice: neoadjuvant, perioperative, and adjuvant chemotherapy and radiotherapy combinations are all possible treatment options in the management of resectable esophagogastric cancer. A number of clinical trials are ongoing, which seek to directly compare multimodal treatment options and hope to provide clarity in this area. Furthermore, increased understanding of the molecular and genetic features of esophagogastric cancer may help to guide management of operable disease by determining optimal patient selection through identification of predictive biomarkers of response and the application of novel targeted agents.