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Hépato-Gastro & Oncologie Digestive

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Biological therapy of non-colorectal digestive tumors Volume 16, issue 5, septembre-octobre 2009

Authors
Service des maladies de l’appareil digestif, CHU Pontchaillou, 2, rue Henri-Le-Guilloux, 35000 Rennes, France

Two biological therapies, imatinib and sorafenib, have recently been made available for the treatment of non-colorectal digestive tumors. This new therapeutic armamentum will undoubtedly affect the whole field of digestive oncology in the coming years. This review of the most recent developments in the field of the biological therapy of cancers will focus on the non-colorectal digestive tumors. With the exception of GIST and HCC tumors, the only available data come from small phase II studies, making conclusions difficult. Nevertheless, these feasability studies offer some hope of an improvement in the prognosis of these tumors in the near future. These results will need to be confirmed in larger-scale studies before we change the way we treat these tumors. The recent availability of these new therapies is an incentive to include as much of our patients as possible in phase II or III studies.