Gemox: a widely useful therapy against solid tumors-review and personal experience

Abstract

Gemcitabine and oxaliplatin have been demonstrated to have synergistic activity in several human cancer cell lines and varying patterns of toxicity. Gemcitabine is a very well tolerated drug with mild myelosuppression, asthenia and nausea/vomiting as its main toxicities. On the other hand, cumulative peripheral neurotoxicity is the main side effect of oxaliplatin. Therefore, there is a strong preclinical rationale to combine gemcitabine and oxaliplatin (Gemox) and to test this regimen as an alternative approach to gemcitabine with cisplatin or carboplatin as a treatment for different tumors. By reviewing the literature we found that the Gemox regimen seems to be active in the treatment of various kinds of tumors and is well tolerated. Further studies, especially to determine the optimal schedule, are clearly warranted. In addition, we report here our single-institution experience with this combination as salvage treatment for heavily pretreated cancer patients.