WR-2721 Reduces Intestinal Toxicity from Concurrent Gemcitabine and Radiation Treatment.

The success of radiotherapy as a single treatmentmodality is limited by several factors, including tumor radioresistance due to hypoxia within a tumormass, efficient DNA repair mechanisms, cellularrecovery during the time between radiation fractions,and distant failure from occult tumor cells outsidethe radiation field. For these reasons, radiotherapyis being increasingly combined with other treatmentmodalities, especially chemotherapy. The resultsfrom this type of combined modality treatment haveshown increased local tumor control rates anddecreased distant metastasis (1-4).