Study of Respiratory Gated Proton Beam Radiotherapy for Inoperable Pancreas Carcinoma

The only curative option for pancreatic cancer patients is surgery, but the patients within 20% of them are possible for a radical surgery. Accordingly, concurrent chemo-radiation therapy is generally used for palliation of unresectable pancreatic cancer patients. So far, the use of 5-fluorouracil (5-FU) was the traditional method of chemotherapy. However, these days, oral anti-cancer medicine, capecitabine(Xeloda®), was developed and considered as an alternative medicine of 5-fluorouracil (5-FU). Furthermore, according to the recent results of clinical trials, the clinical use of capecitabine(Xeloda®) with radiation therapy was proved to be very effective and safe. Proton therapy is a new radiation therapy which remaining energy is released when they reach the tumor, delivering the most effective dose of radiation and which can minimize the exposure to normal tissues. The purpose of this trial is to improve the therapeutic effects by using proton therapy and chemotherapy concurrently.