A trial looking at chemotherapy and radiotherapy for anal cancer (Act 2)

This trial looked at combining different types of chemotherapy with radiotherapy for anal cancer. It also looked at adding 2 further treatments of chemotherapy afterwards. This trial was supported by Cancer Research UK.

Doctors often treat cancer of the anus with radiotherapy and chemotherapy at the same time. This is called chemoradiation. The chemotherapy drugs they most often use are 5 fluorouracil (5FU) and mitomycin. But sometimes this treatment doesn’t work very well and the cancer starts to grow again.

In this trial the researchers wanted to find out:

• If giving 5FU with another drug called cisplatin instead of mitomycin lowered the risk of the cancer coming back

• If giving more chemotherapy after radiotherapy lowered the risk of the cancer coming back

They compared chemoradiation using 5FU and cisplatin with chemoradiation using 5FU and mitomycin. The aim was to find out which of these treatments was best for anal cancer.