Radio-chemotherapy With or Without Panitumumab (Vectibix®) in Irresectable Squamous Cell Carcinoma or Adenocarcinoma of the Oesophagus

For esophageal cancer that can not be removed by surgery, the choice of treatment is a combination of chemotherapy and radiotherapy. We call this combination- (or concurrent) chemoradiotherapy. Chemotherapy is treatment with drugs that kill cancer cells. Both chemotherapy and radiotherapy make the tumour smaller and enhance each other's effect. The goal of treatment with chemotherapy and radiation therapy is to cure the cancer. Unfortunately only a small proportion of patients are cured with this treatment. Improvements in the outcome of treatment may be expected by using the so-called "targeted" treatments. With esophageal cancer, a protein (the epidermal growth factor receptor (this is a kind of trap), the EGFR), is present in many tumours. This protein causes the tumor to grow. Panitumumab is a drug that blocks the functioning of this receptor (catcher), so that possibly the growth and spread of esophageal cancer is prevented. The main objective of this trial is to see if survival of patients with inoperable esophageal cancer improves as panitumumab is added to standard treatment with chemoradiotherapy. It will also investigate whether patients tolerate the addition of panitumumab to the standard treatment. Also, the biological characteristics of the tumor will be examined. In a proportion of patients it will be determined how the enhancement of the cancer is visible on an FDG-PET scan before the start of treatment and how this changes during the treatment. It will be also be evaluated how this treatment affects the survival.