The CancerWeb Report, What's New In Cancer: April, 1996
Germ Cell Tumors of the Testis

• BEP therapy of early (Stage I) disease - The UK Medical Research Council's adjuvant therapy protocol for nonseminoma germ cell tumors of the testis consists of two courses of cisplatin, bleomycin, and etoposide. Among 114 high-risk Stage I patients, whose disease characteristics indicated a 50% chance of recurrence, there were only two relapses over a median follow-up time of four years. There were no clinically-significant changes in fertility, lung function and hearing among the cases studied. (Cullen, J Clin Oncol 14:1106, 1996)

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• Intensive therapy for drug-resistant cases - Although 70-80% of patients with germ cell tumors are apparently cured by chemotherapy with combinations of cisplatin and etoposide with or without bleomycin, the remaining patients require further, so called "salvage" therapy. In this study from Memorial Sloan- Kettering Cancer Center in New York, 40% of 58 patients with disease refractory to cisplatin therapy showed complete responses to high-dose carboplatin, etoposide, and cyclophosphamide with autologous bone-marrow transplant, and 21% were alive and free of disease 28 months later. Predictive factors included growth factors and the number of prior cisplatin treatments for recovery of white blood cell counts, and human chorionic gonadotrophin levels for survival. (Motzer, J Clin Oncol 14:1098, 1996)