Our objective was to investigate the efficacy and safety of capecitabine maintenance therapy (CMT) after capecitabine-based combination chemotherapy in patients with metastatic breast cancer. The clinical data of 139 metastatic breast cancer patients treated from March 2008 to May 2012 with capecitabine-based combination chemotherapy were retrospectively analyzed. When initial disease control w...

BACKGROUND Increased susceptibility to 5-fluorouracil (5-FU)/capecitabine can lead to rapidly occurring toxicity caused by impaired clearance, dihydropyrimidine dehydrogenase deficiency, and other genetic variations in the enzymes that metabolize 5-FU. Life-threatening 5-FU overdoses occur because of infusion pump errors, dosage miscalculations, and accidental or suicidal ingestion of capecitab...

BACKGROUND Trastuzumab emtansine (T-DM1) is an antibody-drug conjugate incorporating the human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2)-targeted antitumor properties of trastuzumab with the cytotoxic activity of the microtubule-inhibitory agent DM1. The antibody and the cytotoxic agent are conjugated by means of a stable linker. METHODS We randomly assigned patients with HER2-positive advanc...

INTRODUCTION More than 90% of patients with pancreatic cancer present either with incurable locally advanced or metastatic disease or relapse following surgery. For these patients systemic therapy offers the only prospect of salvage, but pancreatic cancer is one of the most chemoresistant of tumors; current chemotherapy can only delay progression in a limited proportion of patients and survival...

Fluorouracil and platinum are considered the standard treatment options for advanced gastric cancer. Docetaxel is also an effective agent and it shows no cross-resistance with fluorouracil and platinum. The combination treatment of docetaxel with fluorouracil and platinum has been explored, but it demonstrated intolerable toxicities. An alternative approach in the first-line treatment of gastri...

Gemcitabine and capecitabine are nucleoside analogues used in chemotherapy strategies for the treatment of breast cancer. We previously demonstrated that deficiency in hENT1, the most abundant and widely distributed plasma membrane nucleoside transporter in human cells, confers high-level resistance to gemcitabine toxicity in vitro, whereas the relationship between hENT1 activity and capecitabi...

OBJECTIVES To refresh clinical diagnostic dilemmas in patients presenting with symptoms resembling to those of parkinsonism, to report rare association of colon cancer and paraneoplastic stiff person syndrome (SPS), and to draw attention on the possible correlation of capecitabine therapy with worsening of paraneoplastic SPS. METHODS Case report of the patient with paraneoplastic SPS due to c...

Therapeutic options for locally advanced pancreatic cancer (LAPC) include concurrent chemoradiation, induction chemotherapy followed by chemoradiation or systemic therapy alone. The original Gastro-Intestinal Study Group and Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group studies defined fluorouracil (5-FU) with concurrent radiation therapy followed by maintenance 5-FU until progression, as the standard the...

BACKGROUND The purpose of this study was to evaluate the dose-limiting toxicity (DLT) and maximum tolerated dose of capecitabine when used in combination with epirubicin and cisplatin (ECC) in patients with oesophageal or gastric adenocarcinoma. Response rate, progression-free survival (PFS) and overall survival were also determined, and the effect of previous oesophago-gastric surgery or concu...

capecitabine therapy between January 2005 and February 2009, who subsequently received vitamin E with or without capecitabine treatment modification. The median time to first onset of HFS was 7.3 months (range 4.1–9.6). The initial starting dose of vitamin E for treatment of HFS was 100 mg/day, and the median dose of vitamin E was 200 mg (range 100–400 mg/day). Vitamin E application had a marke...