Gemcitabine combined with cisplatin as neoadjuvant chemotherapy in stage IB-IIIA non-small cell lung cancer.

This single-arm, multicenter, phase II study examined the objective response rate and toxicity after neoadjuvant chemotherapy with gemcitabine and cisplatin in patients with stage IB-IIIA non-small cell lung cancer. Treatment consisted of three 21-day cycles of gemcitabine (1000 mg/m(2)) on days 1 and 8 and cisplatin (75 mg/m(2)) on day 1 of each cycle. Surgery was performed 4-5 weeks after day 1 of the last cycle of study therapy. A total of 52 patients from five investigative sites in Russia were enrolled in the study, of which 50 (96.2%) received study therapy. Of the 49 patients who were evaluable for response, six (12.2%) had a complete response and 16 (32.7%) had a partial response, resulting in an overall response rate of 44.9%. Disease progression occurred in four out of the 49 (8.2%) patients. Radical tumor resection was performed in 38 out of the 49 (77.6%) patients. A total of 41 patients were assessed for a pathological complete response, of which four (9.8%) patients had pathological complete tumor regression. Postsurgical restaging was performed in 36 out of the 41 (87.8%) patients. Tumor downstaging occurred in 16 out of the 36 (44.4%) patients. Grade 3/4 neutropenia and thrombocytopenia were experienced by 28.0%/6.0% patients and 6.0%/2.0% patients, respectively. Grade 3 anemia occurred in 4.0% of the patients. Nonhematological toxicity was mild. Overall mortality was 30.0% (15 out of 50 patients), predominantly from progressive disease. The 1-year overall survival rate was 74.4% (95% confidence interval: 61.3-87.6%). Neoadjuvant chemotherapy with gemcitabine and cisplatin showed a good safety profile with an encouraging possibility of curative surgery in patients with early-stage non-small cell lung cancer.

Association of FGFR2 gene polymorphisms with the risk of breast cancer in population of West Siberia.

Polymorphisms within intron 2 of the FGFR2 gene have been associated with increased risk of breast cancer (BC) in European and Asian populations. The study by Easton et al reported two FGFR2 SNPs, rs2981582 and rs7895676, to be among those most strongly associated with BC risk. Statistical modeling suggested that rs7895676 was the variant responsible for the association observed in the region. In this work, we studied the association between seven FGFR2 SNPs, including rs2981582 and rs7895676, and BC risk in the Russian population of 766 case and 665 control women from Siberia, Russian Federation. In our population, allelic frequencies and the magnitude of linkage disequilibrium (LD) were different from those observed in European and Asian populations. The following three SNPs were significantly associated with BC in our study: rs7895676[C] (odds ratio (OR)=1.28 (1.12-1.43), P=1.7 x 10(-3)), rs2981582[T] (OR=1.46 (1.30-1.62), P=2 x 10(-6)) and rs3135718[G] (OR=1.43 (1.27-1.58), P=6 x 10(-6)). The latter two SNPs were in strong (r(2)=0.95) LD in our sample. Maximum likelihood analysis showed that the model, including rs7895676, only explains that the association is significantly (P<0.001) worse than any of the models, including either rs2981582 or rs3135718. Thus, in addition to the confirmation of association of FGFR2 with the BC risk in this new population, our study has suggested that rs7895676 is not likely to represent the causative variant.