A trial of postoperative adjuvant combination chemo-immunotherapy for stage IV gastric carcinoma.

A chemo-immunotherapy program was designed on the basis of our clinical findings, which revealed that the ability to generate cell-mediated cytotoxicity was remarkably augmented after adriamycin (AM) administration in cancer patients. Twenty patients with stage IV gastric carcinoma who had undergone noncurative resections were treated with the above regimen that consisted of active immunotherapy with autologous tumor cells, in combination with 30 mg of AM, given 7 days before the immunization, followed by long-term tegafur (FT) and immunomodulators. The survival of these patients was compared to that of 3 other groups of patients, namely; 30 patients treated with another chemo-immunotherapy regimen which comprised autologous tumor cells in combination with several anticancer drugs followed by long-term FT and immunomodulators (CCI1), 17 patients treated with mitomycin C followed by long-term FT and immunomodulators (CI), and 24 patients with comparable histories (HC). The first treatment group had significantly improved survival, as compared to the HC group (p less than 0.01) and the survival tended also to be more favorable, when compared to the CCI1 group (p less than 0.2) or the CI group (p less than 0.2). Moreover, the survival rate at 9 months was significantly higher than that of either the CCI1 group (p less than 0.01) or the CI group (p less than 0.01).