Great Debates in Oncology: The Use of Adjuvant And Neoadjuvant Chemotherapy in Soft-Tissue Sarcoma
Dr Van Tine: Hello. My name is Brian Van Tine. I’m the Sarcoma Program Director at Washington University in St. Louis, and joining me today are 2 of my esteemed colleagues. The first is Jonathan Trent, who represents the Sylvester Cancer Center at the University of Miami in Miami, Florida, and the other is Robin Jones, who represents the Royal Marsden, which is in London, England.
Today, we’re going to be talking about the use of adjuvant and neoadjuvant chemotherapy in soft-tissue sarcoma and review the data, and have, hopefully, a brisk discussion on when to use and if to use adjuvant/neoadjuvant chemotherapy in the treatment of soft-tissue sarcoma.
So, I’d like to begin today with a brief overview of sarcoma. Soft-tissue sarcoma is approximately 50 to 75 different diseases, each with histologic and molecular features. They get lumped together as a group of soft-tissue tumors; what they have in common is a mesenchymal origin.
As we get into our understanding of how we treat these diseases we have stage IV diseases where the disease has spread, but once we get into stage II and III diseases which are high-grade tumors that would benefit from surgery and radiation, there is a question of whether or not chemotherapy is involved.
