What Did We Know Before the 2014 American

Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Annual Meeting?Pancreatic cancer is a lethal disease and despite the progress that has been achieved the last years, its prognosis remains poor. More than 50 % of patients have locally advanced or metastatic disease at the time of initial diagnosis and the five-year relative survival rate is approximately 2 % [1, 2].The therapeutic approach of patients with pancreatic adenocarcinoma in the first line setting is based in combination chemotherapy when Eastern Cooperative Oncology group (ECOG) performance status allows it. Results from the randomized phase III PRODIGE trial evaluating FOLFIRINOX versus gemcitabine showed significant superiority of the combination, but with considerable toxicity [3]. Gemcitabine-based combinations with albumin-bound paclitaxel, 5FU, erlotinib, capecitabine or cisplatin are also acceptable treatment options but clinical benefit remains modest [4-8]. What Have We Learnt from the 2014 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Annual Meeting?In this year’s ASCO Annual Meeting, four remarkable abstracts about advanced or metastatic pancreatic cancer were presented concerning first line treatment. The purpose of this paper is to dispose the data and the main findings of these studies as shown collectively in Table 1. The incorporation of the new data on a patient approach algorithm is illustrated in Figure 1