Radiation Therapy + Combination Chemotherapy as 1st-Line Therapy for Patients With Inoperable Esophageal Cancer

Esophageal Cancer Clinical Trial

Official title: Phase II-III Study Comparing Radiochemotherapy With the FOLFOX Regimen Versus Radiochemotherapy With 5FU-cisplatin (Herskovic Regimen) in First Line Treatment of Patients With Inoperable Oesophageal Cancer.

Status Completed

Clinical Trial Summary

RATIONALE: Radiation therapy uses high-energy x-rays to kill tumor cells. Drugs used in chemotherapy, such as oxaliplatin, fluorouracil, leucovorin, and cisplatin, work in different ways to stop the growth of tumor cells, either by killing the cells or by stopping them from dividing. Giving more than one drug (combination chemotherapy) together with radiation therapy may kill more tumor cells.

PURPOSE: This randomized phase II/III trial is studying radiation therapy and two different combination chemotherapy regimens to compare how well they work as first-line therapy in treating patients with esophageal cancer that cannot be removed by surgery.

Clinical Trial Description

OBJECTIVES:

Primary

• To assess the feasibility of radiochemotherapy comprising oxaliplatin, fluorouracil, and leucovorin calcium (FOLFOX regimen) vs fluorouracil and cisplatin (Herskovic regimen) in patients with inoperable esophageal cancer. (Phase II)

• To assess the endoscopic complete response rate in patients treated with these regimens. (Phase II)

• To compare the event-free survival of patients treated with these regimens. (Phase III)

Secondary

• To assess the toxicity profile of these regimens using the NCI CTC v2.0 criteria. (Phase II)

• To compare the overall survival, endoscopic complete response rate, incidence of grade 3-4 toxicities, and time to treatment failure in patients treated with these regimens. (Phase III)

• To evaluate the quality of life of these patients using EORTC QLQ-C30 (version 3) and a validated disease-specific module EORTC QLQ-OES18. (Phase III)

OUTLINE: This is a multicenter study. Patients are stratified according to histological type (adenocarcinoma or adenosquamous carcinoma vs squamous cell carcinoma), pretreatment weight loss within the past 6 months (grade 1 [< 10%] vs grade 2 [≥ 10%]), ECOG performance status (0 vs 1 vs 2), and participating center. Patients are randomized to 1 of 2 treatment arms.

• Arm I (modified FOLFOX 4 regimen): Patients undergo radiotherapy 5 days a week for 5 weeks. Beginning concurrently with radiotherapy, patients receive oxaliplatin IV over 2 hours and leucovorin calcium IV over 2 hours on day 1 and fluorouracil IV continuously over 46 hours on days 1 and 2. Treatment with chemotherapy repeats every 2 weeks for up to 6 courses in the absence of disease progression or unacceptable toxicity.

• Arm II (Herskovic regimen): Patients undergo radiotherapy as in arm I. Patients also receive cisplatin IV continuously over 24 hours on day 1 and fluorouracil IV continuously over 96 hours on days 1-4 of weeks 1, 5, 8, and 11 in the absence of disease progression or unacceptable toxicity.

Quality of life is assessed at baseline, periodically during study therapy, and then every 6 months for 1 year and annually for 3 years after completion of study therapy.

After completion of study therapy, patients are followed at 4 weeks and then every 3-6 months until disease progression.

PROJECTED ACCRUAL: A total of 97 patients will be accrued for the phase II portion of the study. A total of 169 patients will be accrued for the phase III portion of the study. ;

Study Design

Allocation: Randomized, Endpoint Classification: Efficacy Study, Intervention Model: Parallel Assignment, Masking: Open Label, Primary Purpose: Treatment

Related Conditions & MeSH terms

• Esophageal Cancer
• Esophageal Neoplasms

• NCT number: NCT00861094
• Study type: Interventional
• Source: UNICANCER
• Status: Completed
• Phase: Phase 2/Phase 3
• Start date: March 2008
• Completion date: December 2012