Second-line chemotherapy for gallbladder cancer.

Abstract

450 Background: The standard treatment for patients with gallbladder cancer is a combination of gemcitabine and cisplatin based on ABC-02 trial. However, there are no guidelines regarding treatment after first-line therapy. We retrospectively analyzed the efficacy and overall survival of different second-line regimens. Methods: We identified 203 patients with advanced gallbladder cancer who received palliative treatment between January 2000 and December 2015 at Mayo Clinic, Rochester. RECIST criteria was used to assess response. Results: 68 patients received second-line chemotherapy. Median age was 63 years (range: 32-86) and majority were males (60.6%). The median time from the diagnosis to the start of the second line chemotherapy was 8 (1-120) months. The most common used second-line chemotherapy were FOLFOX (14), gemcitabine alone (10), single agent fluoropyrimidine (11), gemcitabine with capecitabine (5), and capecitabine with oxaliplatin (4). There were 30 patients that received 5-fluorouracil based regimens, 20 patients received gemcitabine-based regimen, 3 patients received taxane-based regimen, and 15 patients received other types of chemotherapy. Median progression free survival and overall survival was 2.1 (1.8-2.7) and 16.7 (13.2-21.3) months respectively. There were 10 (52%), 11 (37%), 2 (67%), 5 (33%) with partial response and stable disease in 5-fluorouracil-based, gemcitabine-based, taxane-based, and others, respectively. There were no difference in PFS, with median PFS of 2.5, 2.0, 2.8 and 2.3 months, respectively (p=0.43). The overall survival were 15.7 (8.9-40.2), 15.0 (10.7-21.3), 40.3 (22.0-47.0), and 20.4 (9.2-30.7) months, respectively (p=0.83). There were 27 patients that received single agent chemotherapy and 41 patients that received combined regimen. There were 17 (42%) patients and 13 (48%) patients with partial response or stable disease in single and combined regimen. There were no differences in progression free survival and overall survival between single and multi agent chemotherapy. Conclusions: In this largest single institution study, second-line chemotherapy regimens for gallbladder cancer provided benefit in select patients and there is an urgent need to develop more active therapeutic regimens.