Research for stomach cancer is ongoing. The following advances may still be under investigation in clinical trials and may not be approved or available at this time. Always discuss all diagnostic and treatment options with your doctor.

As researchers learn more about the causes of stomach cancer, they are beginning to look at new ways of preventing and treating the disease. New combinations of existing treatments and new ways of using the body’s immune system may soon provide additional options to treat people with stomach cancer.

Chemoprevention. This is the use of drugs or nutrients to lower a person’s risk of developing cancer. Preliminary research indicates that using antibiotics to treat people infected with Helicobacter pylori can prevent changes to stomach cells that may lead to cancer. Doctors are also experimenting with antioxidants, a group of nutrients that may have anticancer effects.

Combination therapy. The combination of chemotherapy, radiation therapy, and surgery may reduce the chance that stomach cancer will return. Doctors may give chemotherapy before surgery (neoadjuvant therapy) or after surgery (adjuvant therapy). Doctors are also exploring the possibility of giving both radiation therapy and chemotherapy before or after surgery.

Chemotherapy improvements. Multidrug chemotherapy combinations are being tested for people with stomach cancer. Taxanes (a group of drugs that includes paclitaxel [Taxol] and docetaxel [Taxotere]), irinotecan (Camptosar), oxaliplatin (Eloxatin), and oral drugs such as S-1 and capecitabine (Xeloda) are drugs that are being combined with other types of chemotherapy.

Cancer vaccines. Vaccines stimulate the patient’s immune system to fight cancer and are being tested for stomach cancer.

Targeted therapies. Targeted therapy is a treatment that targets faulty genes or proteins that contribute to cancer growth and development. A tumor requires angiogenesis (the growth of new blood vessels) to grow. Drugs that block the growth of these new blood vessels are called antiangiogenic drugs. Examples of targeted therapies include gefitinib (Iressa), cetuximab (Erbitux), and bevacizumab (Avastin).