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Enzalutamide (ENZ) and abiraterone acetate with prednisone (AAP) represent novel hormonal therapies used in the treatment of metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer (mCRPC). The aim of the study was to assess the long-term outcome of mCRPC patients treated with ENZ or AAP in real-life clinical practice.The outcomes of 337 mCRPC patients treated with ENZ or AAP were retrospectively analysed.Median radiographic progression-free (rPFS) and overall survival (OS) of patients treated in the first line (pre-chemotherapy) was 13.89 (95% CI=12.40-16.80) and 31.02 (95% CI=24.27-37.44) months vs. 10.97 (95% CI=8.97-14.82) and 26.57 (95% CI=15.97-33.92) months for those treated in the second line (post-chemotherapy). We found inferior survival for patients with synchronous metastases, high Gleason score (GS) and visceral metastases.The efficacy of both ENZ and AAP in mCRPC patients is herein confirmed. Synchronous metastases, high GS and visceral metastases were identified as significant adverse prognostic factors.

Purpose To analyze clinicopathologic characteristics, treatment procedures, and prognosis of men with breast cancer (MBC) in the Czech Republic and compare them with international data. Methods Men diagnosed with breast cancer in 2007–2017 were retrospectively identified from the databases of Complex Oncological Centers in the Czech Republic, and subsequently clinical, histopathological, and molecular-genetic characteristics, treatment procedures, and long-term treatment outcomes were evaluated. Prognostic factors of survival outcomes (overall survival, relapse-free survival, and breast cancer-specific mortality) were analyzed using Cox and the competing risks model. Results In this study, data from 256 patients with MBC at a median age of 66 years were analyzed. Of 201 patients with primary non-metastatic (M0) radically treated MBC, 6% were younger than 40 years, 29% had stage I, 55% were node-negative (cN0), and 54% were indicated to genetic testing. Estrogen receptor (ER) expression over 10% had 97% of tumors, 61% had high mitotic activity (Ki67), 40% high grade (G3), and 68% Luminal B-like (HER2- negative) subtype. Regarding the therapy, 97% of men underwent mastectomy (ME), 34% sentinel lymph node biopsy (SLNB), 48% adjuvant radiotherapy (RT), 13% neoadjuvant therapy, 44% adjuvant chemotherapy (CT), 90% adjuvant endocrine therapy (ET), of which 74% adjuvant tamoxifen (TMX). Patients treated with aromatase inhibitor (AI) alone had significantly shortened RFS (p de novo metastatic (M1) group (N = 30), and 39 months in the group of M0/X patients treated with palliative intention (N = 25). Conclusion Although the number of MBC cases with unfavorable features (young age, M1 cases, predominant Luminal B-like tumors) was higher in the Czech dataset compared to international studies, the prognosis of men remains consistent with the real-world published data.

Background/Aim: MicroRNAs (miRs) play an important role in the regulation of cancer-related processes and are promising candidates for cancer biomarkers. The aim of the study was to evaluate the association of response to anti-EGFR monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) with selected miR expression profiles, including miR-125b, let-7c, miR-99a, miR-17, miR-143 and miR-145 in metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC) patients. Patients and Methods: This retrospective study included 46 patients with mCRC harbouring wild-type RAS gene treated with cetuximab or panitumumab combined with chemotherapy in first- or second-line therapy. The miR expression was assessed using qRT-PCR. Results: Down-regulation of miR-125b and let-7c and up-regulation of miR-17 were found in the tumour tissue (p=0.0226, p=0.0040, p

Immunotherapy based on immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) represents a novel anticancer treatment strategy. Monoclonal antibodies targeting cytotoxic T-lymphocyte antigen-4 (CTLA4), programmed cell death-1 receptor (PD1) and programmed cell death-1 ligand (PD-L1) have shown efficacy and safety in the treatment of various malignancies. Some of them have recently found their place in a routine clinical practice, while others are at different phases of clinical trials. Treatment with ICIs may be accompanied by undesirable impairment of immunotolerance to non-tumoural tissues, leading to a specific side-effect also called immune-related adverse events (irAE). There is an increasing body of evidence that the development of irAEs is associated with a beneficial effect of immunotherapy, thus it has become a hot topic in the field of clinical oncology. This review is focused on data from recently published studies evaluating the association between irAEs and outcome of patients with cancer treated with ICIs.

Background: Beta-adrenergic signalling plays an important role in several cancer-related processes, including angiogenesis. The impact of beta-blocker use on prognosis of cancer patients treated with antiangiogenic agents is unclear. The aim of this study was to evaluate the association between the incidental use of beta-blockers and the outcomes of patients with metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC) treated with bevacizumab-based therapy. Methods: Clinical data from 514 mCRC patients treated with bevacizumab between 2005 and 2019 were analysed retrospectively. The association of progression-free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS) with the incidental use of beta-blockers and other common antihypertensive drugs was assessed. Results: The median PFS and OS for patients using beta-blockers was 11.40 (95% confidence interval (CI) 10.10–13.61) months and 26.8 (95% CI 22.2–32.2) months compared with 8.30 (95% CI 7.80–9.57) and 21.0 (95% CI 17.8–23.8) months for patients not using beta-blockers (p = 0.006 and p = 0.009, respectively). In the Cox multivariate analysis, the use of beta-blockers was a significant factor predicting both PFS (hazard ratio (HR) = 0.763 (95% CI 0.606–0.960), p = 0.021) and OS (HR = 0.730 (95% CI 0.560–0.951), p = 0.020). Conclusions: The results of the present retrospective study suggest that there is a significant association between the use of beta-blockers and favourable outcomes of mCRC patients treated with bevacizumab-based therapy.

BACKGROUND/AIM The aim of our study was to assess the predictive role of primary tumour sidedness (PTS) in patients with metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC) harbouring wild-type RAS and treated with targeted agents. PATIENTS AND METHODS The cohort included 178 patients treated with first-line chemotherapy plus cetuximab, panitumumab or bevacizumab. RESULTS We observed longer progression-free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS) in patients with left-sided (L-CRC) compared to right-sided tumours (R-CRC) treated with anti-EGFR mAbs (p=0.0033 and p=0.0037), while there was no difference in patients treated with bevacizumab (p=0.076 and p=0.56). Finally, we observed longer PFS and OS in patients with L-CRC treated with anti-EGFR mAbs and those with R-CRC treated with bevacizumab compared to the reverse combination (p=0.0002 and p=0.011). CONCLUSION PTS is a predictive factor for anti-EGFR mAbs, not for bevacizumab. Superior survival was observed when anti-EGFR mAbs were used for L-CRC and bevacizumab for R-CRC.

BACKGROUND Erlotinib is a tyrosine kinase inhibitor targeting epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR); it is used in the treatment of advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). We focused on the role of serum concentration of erlotinib and its association with outcome and toxicity in patients with advanced NSCLC harbouring the wild-type EGFR gene or squamous histology. PATIENTS AND METHODS Clinical data of 122 patients were analyzed. Serum samples were collected within four weeks after the initiation of treatment. RESULTS There was no significant association of erlotinib concentration with PFS nor OS (p=0.352 and p=0.6393). Significant associations of erlotinib concentration with grade of skin rash and diarrhoea (p

Pemetrexed is an intravenously administered antifolate cytostatic agent targeting several folate-dependent enzymatic pathways, widely used in the treatment of patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). It has been previously demonstrated that the superiority of pemetrexed is limited to patients with non-squamous histology. Aside from the non-squamous histology, there is still no available molecular biomarker predicting treatment efficacy of pemetrexed-based chemotherapy. The aim of our retrospective study was to evaluate the association of baseline serum levels of C-reactive protein (CRP) with outcomes in a large cohort of patients with non-squamous NSCLC treated with pemetrexed. Clinical data of 325 patients were analysed. Serum samples were collected within one week before the initiation of treatment. The median progression-free (PFS) and overall survival (OS) for patients with high CRP was 2.1 and 9.5 compared to 4.2 and 20.5 months for those with normal CRP (p=0.002 and p

Molecular targeted therapy based on tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKI), directed at epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) is one of the novel effective agents in management of advanced-stage of Non Small Cell Lung cancer (NSCLC). However several candidate predictors have been extensively studied, apart from activating EGFR gene mutations, no reliable biochemical or molecular predictors of response to erlotinib have been validated. The aim of our retrospective study was to evaluate the association of baseline serum albumin with outcomes in a large cohort of patients with advanced-stage NSCLC treated with erlotinib. Clinical data of 457 patients with locally-advanced (III B) or metastatic stage (IV) NSCLC treated with erlotinib were analysed. Serum samples were collected and the measurement was performed one day before the initiation of erlotinib treatment. Before the treatment initiation, low albumin was (

Tumor biomarkers represent effective tools for diagnostics and follow-up monitoring of patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). We focused on evaluating the predictive and prognostic role of the seven following tumor biomarkers: carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA), cytokeratin-19 fragment (CYFRA 21-1), fragments of cytokeratin 8, 18 and 19 (MonoTotal), neuron-specific enolase (NSE), chromogranin A, thymidine kinase (TK) and squamous cell carcinoma antigen (SCCA) in patients with advanced-stage NSCLC treated with pemetrexed-based chemotherapy.In total, 114 patients with advanced-stage (IIIB or IV) non-squamous NSCLC treated with pemetrexed-based chemotherapy (monotherapy or combination with a platinum derivative) were included. Comparison of progression-free (PFS) and overall survival (OS) according to the level of assessed tumor markers was performed using the log-rank test.We recorded significantly shorter OS for patients with high pretreatment levels of CYFRA 21-1 (10.3 vs. 23.4 months; p0.001), NSE (1.6 vs. 13.5 months; p=0.003) and TK (11.3 vs. 23.4 months; p=0.003).CYFRA 21-1, NSE and TK are feasible biomarkers for estimation of a patient's overall prognosis, however, none of the measured serum tumor markers were able to predict the efficacy of pemetrexed-based chemotherapy.

Tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs) targeting epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) represent novel, effective tools in the management of advanced-stage non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). We aimed to evaluate the incidence and predictive role of EGFR gene amplification in patients with advanced-stage NSCLC treated with EGFR-TKIs.The study included 290 patients with advanced-stage (IIIB or IV) NSCLC. Multiplex ligation-dependent probe amplification (MLPA) and polymerase chain reaction (PCR) were used for detection of EGFR gene amplification and EGFR mutations, respectively.EGFR amplification was detected in 26 (9.0%) patients. EGFR amplification was found more frequently in patients harboring the EGFR mutation (p0.001). No significant corelation between EGFR gene amplification and survival was observed.EGFR gene amplification is associated with EGFR gene mutation. EGFR gene amplification is not a feasible predictive biomarker for treatment with EGFR-TKIs in patients with advanced-stage NSCLC.

Thymomas are the most common mediastinal tumors. Systemic therapy for patients with unresectable or recurrent thymomas is a challenging field in the current oncology research. There is some evidence that somatostatin analogs combined with corticosteroids may have a role in the treatment of advanced malignant thymoma; however, the role of these agents have not been fully evaluated. Case report A 39-year-old man with metastatic thymoma was administered long-acting depot injection form of octreotide. Octreotide scan before the treatment initiation revealed low uptake. CT control after three months of the treatment revealed marked regression of pleural metastases, while the primary tumor mass remained stable. The treatment response was lasting for 9 months. Conclusion We describe an interesting case of marked clinical and radiological response of advanced malignant thymoma to the treatment with octreotide in a heavily pre-treated patient, even though octreotide scan revealed low uptake.