The new information could empower doctors to decide whether to recommend a second course of powerful chemotherapy after surgery. The research also paves the way for wider and more specialised clinical trials for this cancer which will monitor patients in real-time, rather than using past samples, and which could lead to new combinations of chemotherapy, including the new breast cancer drug, Herceptin, which has recently been proven to be effective in gastro-oesophageal cancers.

Dr Srinivasan Madhusudan, Clinical Associate Professor & Consultant in Medical Oncology at Nottingham University Hospitals and the University's School of Molecular Medical Sciences, said: "Recent scientific advances have given real hope for patients with gastro-oesophageal cancers. The Nottingham Upper Gastrointestinal Cancer Group is a multidisciplinary research team consisting of Oncologists, Surgeons, Pathologists and Radiologists. We aim to exploit the 'new science' for patient benefit. This study published online today in the British Journal of Cancer provides evidence that it may be possible to tailor gastro-oesophageal cancer treatments based on 'new' biology. We are planning a larger prospective multicentre study to confirm these findings and we believe will have major clinical impact on how we treat these aggressive tumours in the future."

Source: University of Nottingham