Published in:
01-09-2019 | Case Report
Effective Treatment of Cytotoxic Agent Refractory Alpha-Fetoprotein-Producing Gastric Cancer with Ramucirumab: a Case Report and Review of the Literature
Authors:
Jun Takada, Hiroshi Araki, Noritaka Ozawa, Tomohiko Sugiyama, Masaya Kubota, Takashi Ibuka, Masahito Shimizu
Published in:
Journal of Gastrointestinal Cancer
|
Issue 3/2019
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Excerpt
Alpha-fetoprotein (AFP), an oncofetal glycoprotein that is mainly produced by the liver, yolk sac, and gastrointestinal tract during fetal development [
1], is significantly expressed in several pathological conditions, especially hepatocellular carcinoma [
2]. Elevated AFP levels are also observed in other malignant tumors, including gastric cancer [
3]. In 1970, Bourreille et al. [
4] initially reported cases of patients with AFP-producing gastric cancer (AFP-GC) and simultaneous liver metastases. AFP-GC is a relatively rare, aggressive malignancy that accounts for 1.3–15.0% of all GC cases [
5,
6]. However, AFP-GC is associated with an extremely poor prognosis, because it can easily metastasize to the liver and lymph nodes [
7,
8]. Currently, there is no standard therapy for patients with AFP-GC. Hence, there is an urgent need to develop an effective chemotherapeutic regimen for AFP-GC. …
