Dr. Klopp on the Future of Chemoradiation in Endometrial Cancer

Ann H. Klopp, MD, PhD, an associate professor of radiation oncology at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, discusses the future of chemotherapy in combination with radiation for the treatment of patients with endometrial cancer.

Going forward, the hope is to better distinguish subsets of patients based on their biology in order to give them a particular type of treatment, explains Klopp. For example, some patients may benefit from immunotherapy, whereas some may benefit from targeted therapy. According to Klopp, the current best evidence suggests that the standard of care should be chemotherapy and radiation combined.

For the patients who only receive chemotherapy and do not receive radiation, there is a 30% risk of having the cancer come back in the pelvis, Klopp says. Sometimes those patients can still get curative radiation treatment, but it is a more intensive type of radiation that does not always work.