Esylate in advanced/metastatic GIST. Ann Surg 2007, 245:341-346. 13. Raut CP, Posner M, Desai J, Morgan JA, George S, Zahrieh D, et al: Surgical management of advanced gastrointestinal stromal tumors after treatment with targeted systemic therapy using kinase inhibitors. J Clin Oncol 2006, 24:2325-2331.Conclusions Overall, this and other reports can not lead to any definitive conclusion regarding the benefit of surgery in patients with locally advanced GIST Tyrphostin AG 490MedChemExpress AG-490 treated with IM. This benefit can only be demonstrated in randomised prospective trials, which are ongoing in the metastatic setting. However, since patients with locally advanced disease who become operable following IM appear to benefit from resection of the primary tumor, we think that surgery should be proposed, or at least discussed, in this subgroup of patients when the disease no PubMed ID:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27741243 longer responds to IM.Acknowledgements The BFR14 trial was funded by a research grant from Novartis (Basel, Switzerland). Author details 1 Department of medicine, Institut Gustave Roussy, 39 bis rue Camille Desmoulins, 94800 Villejuif, France. 2Department of medicine, Centre L n B ard, 28 rue Laennec, 69008 Lyon, France. 3Department of medicine, Institut Paoli-Calmettes, 232 boulevard Sainte Marguerite, 13009 Marseille, France. 4Department of medicine, Institut Bergoni? 229 cours Argonne, 33000 Bordeaux, France. 5Department of medicine, Centre Oscar Lambret,Blesius et al. BMC Cancer 2011, 11:72 http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2407/11/Page 7 of14. Rutkowski P, Nowecki Z, Nyckowski P, Dziewirski W, Grzesiakowska U, Nasierowska-Guttmejer A, et al: Surgical treatment of patients with initially inoperable and/or metastatic gastrointestinal stromal tumors (GIST) during therapy with imatinib mesylate. J Surg Oncol 2006, 93:304-311. 15. Blay JY, Le CA, Ray-Coquard I, Bui B, Duffaud F, Delbaldo C, et al: Prospective multicentric randomized phase III study of imatinib in patients with advanced gastrointestinal stromal tumors comparing interruption versus continuation of treatment beyond 1 year: the French Sarcoma Group. J Clin Oncol 2007, 25:1107-1113. 16. Le Cesne A, Ray-Coquard I, Bui B, Rios M, Adenis A, Bertucci F, et al: Continuous versus interruption of imatinib (IM) in responding patients with advanced GIST after three years of treatment: A prospective randomized phase III trial of the French Sarcoma Group. J Clin Oncol (Meeting Abstracts) 2007, 25:10005. 17. Therasse P, Arbuck SG, Eisenhauer EA, Wanders J, Kaplan RS, Rubinstein L, et al: New guidelines to evaluate the response to treatment in solid tumors. European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer, National Cancer Institute of the United States, National Cancer Institute of Canada. J Natl Cancer Inst 2000, 92:205-216. 18. Kaplan EL, Meier P: Nonparametric estimation from incomplete observations. J Am Stat Assoc 1958, 53:457-481. Pre-publication history The pre-publication history for this paper can be accessed here: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2407/11/72/prepubdoi:10.1186/1471-2407-11-72 Cite this article as: Blesius et al.: Neoadjuvant imatinib in patients with locally advanced non metastatic GIST in the prospective BFR14 trial. BMC Cancer 2011 11:72.Submit your next manuscript to BioMed Central and take full advantage of:?Convenient online submission ?Thorough peer review ?No space constraints or color figure charges ?Immediate publication on acceptance ?Inclusion in PubMed, CAS, Scopus and Google Scholar ?Research which is fr.