Aiwu Ruth He, MD, PhD, is a gastrointestinal medical oncologist at the MedStar Health Lombardi Cancer Center

Aiwu Ruth He, MD, PhD, associate professor of medicine, Georgetown-Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center, summarizes current treatment approaches in gastrointestinal (GI) cancers.

Immune checkpoint inhibitors have shown encouraging results in patients with gastric cancer and all of the microsatellite instable-high (MSI-H) tumors of the GI tract. Much effort has been invested in trying to increase the response rate of immune checkpoint inhibitors in other types of GI cancers, including colon cancer and pancreatic cancer with combination therapy.

Ongoing clinical trials are combining immunotherapy agents, chemotherapy agents, and radiation therapies to increase low response rates in single-agent immune therapy.

These trials include the CheckMate-142 study supporting the use of nivolumab (Opdivo) in combination with ipilumumab (Yervoy) for previously treated patients with DNA mismatch repair-deficient/MSI-H metastatic colon cancer and the phase II LAPACT trial, which showed induction treatment with nab-paclitaxel (Abraxane) plus gemcitabine for patients with newly diagnosed, locally advanced pancreatic cancer.

Aiwu Ruth He, MD, PhD

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Dr. He on the Potential of Immune Checkpoint Inhibitors in GI Cancers