Palliative treatment of unresectable pancreatico-biliary cancer by either Gemcitabine or Octreotide/Imatinib – impact on biomarkers of angiogenesis

Aims: Gemcitabine represents standard Tx for unresectable cancers of the pancreas/distal biliary tract. Recent interest has focused on antiangiogenic properties in a mouse model of pancreatic cancer (JCI 2003); either VEGF or PDGF inhibition alone were less effective than the combination of both in terms of angiogenesis. In HCC pts. we recently evaluated the impact of biomarkers on disease progression and survival (Cancer Res Clin Oncol 2006; 132:699–708). Methods: To investigate in a phase I/II trial the feasability of a combination (group I, n=11) of octreotide (30mg im every 4 weeks, targeting VEGF-A) plus im…