A study of second-line irinotecan plus cisplatin vs. irinotecan alone in platinum-naïve patients with early relapse of gastric cancer refractory to adjuvant S-1 monotherapy: exploratory subgroup analysis of the randomized phase III TRICS trial

Backgrounds Many patients with gastric cancer relapse during or early after adjuvant chemotherapy. The standard treatment for early relapse patients is a second-line chemotherapy (SLC) based on irinotecan, taxanes, or a platinum-based chemotherapy. The platinum-containing biweekly irinotecan plus cisplatin (IRI/CDDP) combination was assumed to be promising in several reports of clinical trials as SLC. TRICS trial, a randomized phase III study of IRI/CDDP vs. IRI in platinum-naive gastric cancers refractory to S-1 monotherapy, revealed that both irinotecan-based chemotherapies were effective and well tolerated.