According to Howard Safran, M.D., co-chair of the Gastroenterology Section of the Brown University Oncology Group, most pancreatic and stomach tumors are hard to detect at an early stage. When they are found, the tumors have often spread locally into lymph nodes and surrounding blood vessels. These malignancies may be too extensive to remove by surgery, particularly in frail patients, he said.
Last year, the Brown University Oncology Group improved the prognosis for patients with gastric tumors by developing a treatment which combined use of the drug paclitaxel and radiation therapy to reduce locally advanced and inoperable tumors in the pancreas or stomach. Paclitaxel is derived from taxol, a chemical obtained from the bark of the yew tree. As a chemotherapy drug, paclitaxel is used for the treatment of ovarian, breast and lung cancer.
Now those same doctors are about to begin testing several new promising drugs to inhibit the spread or reoccurrence of cancer in the gastrointestinal tract.