Long-term good-quality survival in a young man with metastatic pancreatic cancer pretreated with gemcitabine + nab-paclitaxel regimen achieved with nal-IRI + 5-FU/LV combination therapy

Pancreatic cancer is a disease with high mortality rates, often detected at late stage. Surgical resection is the only curative treatment, and the outcomes are improved by adjuvant chemotherapy. In patients with an advanced finding, the FOLFIRINOX regimen or the doublet gemcitabine + nab-paclitaxel are recommended in the first-line of palliative treatment; in the second-line, following the gemcitabine-based treatment, nal-IRI (pegylated liposomal irinotecan) + 5-fluorouracil (5-FU) + leucovorin (LV), or the regimen with 5-FU are recommended; and following the therapy with 5-FU, gemcitabine in monotherapy or in combination. New results presented at the 2023 ESMO Congress showed that, in the first-line of palliative treatment, the doublet gemcitabine + nab-paclitaxel had a greater benefit than the FOLFIRINOX regimen. We report a case of a 50-year-old man with progression of pancreatic cancer after surgical and adjuvant treatment in whom, after failure of gemcitabine + nab-paclitaxel in the first-line of palliative treatment, one-year survival with a good quality of life was achieved with the combination of nal-IRI + 5-FU/LV.

Keywords: pancreatic cancer, FOLFIRINOX, gemcitabine, pegylated liposomal irinotecan, case report, GENERATE.