A trial looking at chemotherapy for advanced cancer of the stomach or gastro oesophageal junction that has continued to grow (PEP0206)

This trial looked at the chemotherapy drugs irinotecan, docetaxel and PEP02 for advanced cancer of the stomach, or cancer where the food pipe (oesophagus) meets the stomach (cancer of the gastro oesophageal junction).

Treatment for cancer of the stomach and treatment for gastro oesophageal junction cancer usually includes chemotherapy, surgery or radiotherapy, or a combination of these. If your cancer comes back after the first type of chemotherapy, you may have more chemotherapy to help relieve symptoms and slow down cancer growth. Doctors call this further chemotherapy second line treatment.

There is a choice of possible chemotherapy drugs that doctors can use as second line treatment. In this trial, they looked at 3 drugs – irinotecan, docetaxel and PEP02. When the trial was done, irinotecan and docetaxel were already used to treat this type of cancer. PEP02 was a newer form of irinotecan being tested in this trial.

The aims of the trial were find out

• How well each of these 3 chemotherapy drugs worked as a second line treatment for stomach cancer or gastro oesophageal junction cancer

• More about their side effects