ULB - Hôpital Erasme

Surgical resection is the only potentially curative treatment for patients with pancreatic cancer. As a standard, surgery is usually followed by adjuvant therapy that improves survival but neoadjuvant therapy is a rapidly emerging concept that needs to be explored and validated. In this setting, preoperative chemotherapy seems to be feasible and can be prolonged by radiation therapy with promising benefit for patients in terms of prolonged survival. However, the exact and best therapeutic sequence is not yet known and the additional role of adding radiation therapy to chemotherapy requires validation in randomized trials. We propose to evaluate the impact and efficacy of adding high dose radiotherapy to preoperative chemotherapy in patients with borderline or high risk resectable pancreatic adenocarcinoma. We hypothesize that this full sequence strategy of pre-operative treatment is safe and feasible and will improve the prognosis of pancreatic adenocarcinoma.