Modified irinotecan and infusional 5-fluorouracil (mFOLFIRI) in patients with refractory advanced pancreas cancer (APC): a single-institution experience.

Pancreatic adenocarcinoma is the fourth leading cause of cancer death. Recently, MM-398 (nanoliposomal irinotecan) was shown to be associated with significant improvement in outcome measures with acceptable toxicities when combined with 5-fluorouracil (5-FU)/leucovorin (LV) compared to 5-FU/LV alone in patients failing one line of gemcitabine-based therapy. There is a paucity of data evaluating the role of irinotecan in combination with 5FU in advanced pancreas cancer (APC). We performed a retrospective analysis of all patients who received mFOLFIRI (minus bolus 5FU and LV). All patients with metastatic disease who had failed at least one line of gemcitabine-based therapy prior to receiving mFOLFIRI were included in this study. Descriptive statistics were used to assess the continuous variables and adverse events (AEs), and Kaplan-Meier methods were used to calculate the median progression-free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS). Forty patients were included in this analysis. Patients received 1-5 lines of prior therapy (25 % with more than 3 lines of prior therapy). The mean age at diagnosis was 60, and 98 % had ECOG of 1. The mean CA 19-9 at the start of therapy was 33,169 U/ml. The median PFS was 2.59 months [95 % confidence interval (CI) (1.90, 3.54)], and OS was 4.75 months [95 % CI (3.14, 8.98)]. The most common AEs included fatigue (98 %), neuropathy (83 %), anorexia (68 %), nausea (60 %) and constipation (55 %). Grade 3 toxicities included fatigue (13 %) and rash (3 %). There were no observed grade 4 toxicities. In this single-institution retrospective analysis, mFOLFIRI was found to be both tolerable and relatively effective in a heavily pretreated patient population with APC. Future prospective studies should consider evaluating the role of mFOLFIRI in refractory APC.