Recent advances in conventional-dose salvage chemotherapy in patients with cisplatin-resistant or refractory testicular germ cell tumors.

Testicular germ cell tumors represent the most frequent malignancy in young males aged 20-35 years. Despite the considerably high cure rates provided by platinum-based chemotherapy, 20-30% of cases with advanced disease do not achieve a long-term disease-free survival with first-line chemotherapy. These patients are candidates for conventional-dose or high-dose salvage chemotherapy. The current conventional-dose salvage regimens of reference are the vinblastine-ifosfamide-cisplatin or etoposide-ifosfamide-cisplatin combinations, which are expected to cure approximately 25% of non-seminomatous germ-cell tumour patients. Paclitaxel has also been proved effective both as monotherapy in heavily-pretreated cases and as part of first-line salvage regimens; the combination of paclitaxel-ifosfamide-cisplatin, followed or not by high-dose chemotherapy, induced a favorable long-term disease-free survival rate, especially in patients with good prognosis. Newer cytotoxic drugs, such as gemcitabine and oxaliplatin have also been proved effective, while other agents, such as temozolamide, or targeted therapies, such as trastuzumab in cases over-expressing HER2/neu (20% of relapsing germ-cell tumors) are currently under evaluation. Seminomas have generally a better prognosis than non-seminomatous tumors and salvage therapy is expected to cure about 50% of all cases.