Current trends in gastric cancer treatment in Europe

Abstract

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, for any purpose, even commercially, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. How to cite this article: Kamiya S, Rouvelas I, Lindblad M, Nilsson M. Current trends in gastric cancer treatment in Europe. J Cancer Metastasis Treat 2018;4:35. http://dx. Abstract Gastric cancer is one of the major causes of cancer-related deaths, despite the gradual decrease of its incidence in the West. Minimally invasive procedures, such as endoscopic resection and laparoscopic gastrectomy, have been successfully introduced in European high-volume centres, in the treatment of early gastric cancer. Regarding advanced, localized gastric cancer a number of prospective trials have been completed in search of better therapeutic options, aiming to optimize the efficacy vs. adverse effect ratio. From the results of these prospective randomized trials, the therapeutic strategy has in the last decades shifted emphasis from adjuvant therapy to neoadjuvant or perioperative chemotherapy, in curatively intended treatment. Moreover, recent studies have shown promising results in the use of molecular targeted agents, both in perioperative and palliative settings. The introduction of molecularly targeted therapy will enable a personalized approach based on each patient's and tumor's characteristics, maximizing the benefits from chemotherapy. The present review article focuses on recent therapeutic trends, as well as future perspectives, of surgical and oncological gastric cancer treatment in the Western setting, mainly based on landmark clinical trials.