ArticleCancers2020
Ramucirumab in Combination with Pembrolizumab in Treatment-Naïve Advanced Gastric or GEJ Adenocarcinoma: Safety and Antitumor Activity from the Phase 1a/b JVDF Trial.
Article in Cancers, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 20 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
20 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 31 citations in OpenAlex.
- The efficacy and safety of pembrolizumab in the treatment of HER2-negative advanced gastric or gastroesophageal junction cancer: a systematic review and meta-analysis of emerging clinical data.Frontiers in immunology · 2026Pooled it
- Immunotherapy combined with apatinib in the treatment of advanced or metastatic gastric/gastroesophageal tumors: a systematic review and meta-analysis.BMC cancer · 2024Pooled it
- Distinct Spatially Resolved Tumor Microenvironment Trajectories Define Benefit from Ramucirumab plus Pembrolizumab in Refractory PD-L1+ Gastric Cancer.Cancer immunology research · 2026Trial
- Ramucirumab, Avelumab, and Paclitaxel as Second-Line Treatment in Esophagogastric Adenocarcinoma: The Phase 2 RAP (AIO-STO-0218) Nonrandomized Controlled Trial.JAMA network open · 2024Trial
- In search of the best perioperative treatment for gastroesophageal cancer: is there a role for antiangiogenesis?Journal of gastrointestinal oncology · 2026Article
- Development of combinatorial immunotherapy for patients with advanced gastric cancer from the perspective of immunosuppressive mechanisms in the tumor microenvironment.Fukushima journal of medical science · 2026Review
- Immune regulatory mechanisms in the tumor microenvironment and their applications in cancer therapy: from basic research to clinical translation.Frontiers in immunology · 2026Review
- The Interplay Between Esophageal Adenocarcinoma and Its Tumor Microenvironment: Toward Innovative Therapies.Cells · 2025Review
- Emerging Strategies for Targeting Angiogenesis and the Tumor Microenvironment in Gastrointestinal Malignancies: A Comprehensive Review.Pharmaceuticals (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Review
- Targeting Angiogenesis Alone and in Combination with Immune Checkpoint Inhibitors in Advanced Gastroesophageal Malignancies.Current gastroenterology reports · 2024Review
- All-cause and immune checkpoint inhibitor-associated acute kidney injury in immune checkpoint inhibitor users: a meta-analysis of occurrence rate, risk factors and mortality.Clinical kidney journal · 2024Article
- Research progress and future directions of immune checkpoint inhibitor combination therapy in advanced gastric cancer.Therapeutic advances in medical oncology · 2024Review
- Early and Persistent Dysphagia Relief Predicts Tumor Response in Esophageal Squamous Cell Carcinoma Patients Treated with Immunochemotherapy.Annals of surgical oncology · 2023Article
- The Role of Angiogenesis Targeted Therapies in Metastatic Advanced Gastric Cancer: A Narrative Review.Journal of clinical medicine · 2023Review
- Targeting autophagy peptidase ATG4B with a novel natural product inhibitor Azalomycin F4a for advanced gastric cancer.Cell death & disease · 2022Article
- Immune evasion mechanisms and therapeutic strategies in gastric cancer.World journal of gastrointestinal oncology · 2022Review
- Recent advances in the progress of immune checkpoint inhibitors in the treatment of advanced gastric cancer: A review.Frontiers in oncology · 2022Review
- Apatinib combined with PD-1 antibody for third-line or later treatment of advanced gastric cancer.Frontiers in oncology · 2022Article
- First-line immune-based combination therapies for advanced non-small cell lung cancer: A Bayesian network meta-analysis.Cancer medicine · 2021Article
- Research Progress of Immunotherapy for Gastric Cancer.Technology in cancer research & treatmentReview
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
17 authors at 9 institutions in 4 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Ramucirumab (anti-VEGFR2) plus pembrolizumab (anti-PD1) demonstrated promising antitumor activity and tolerability among patients with previously treated advanced cancers, supporting growing evidence that combination therapies modulating the tumor microenvironment may expand the spectrum of patients who respond to checkpoint inhibitors. Here we present the results of this combination in first-line patients with metastatic G/GEJ cancer. Twenty-eight patients (≥18 years) with no prior systemic chemotherapy in the advanced/metastatic setting received ramucirumab (8 mg/kg days 1 and 8) plus pembrolizumab (200 mg day 1) every 3 weeks as part of JVDF phase 1a/b study. The primary endpoint was safety. Secondary endpoints included progression-free survival (PFS), objective response rate (ORR), and overall survival (OS). Tumors were PD-L1-positive (combined positive score ≥ 1) in 19 and -negative in 6 patients. Eighteen patients experienced grade 3 treatment-related adverse events, most commonly hypertension (14%) and elevated alanine/aspartate aminotransferase (11% each), with no grade 4 or 5 reported. The ORR was 25% (PD-L1-positive, 32%; PD-L1-negative, 17%) with duration of response not reached. PFS was 5.6 months (PD-L1-positive, 8.6 months; PD-L1-negative, 4.3 months), and OS 14.6 months (PD-L1-positive, 17.3 months; PD-L1-negative, 11.3 months). Acknowledging study design limitations, ramucirumab plus pembrolizumab had encouraging durable clinical activity with no unexpected toxicities in treatment-naïve biomarker-unselected metastatic G/GEJ cancer, and improved outcomes in patients with PD-L1-positive tumors.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.