Locally advanced esophageal adenocarcinoma: current standards and molecular predictors of outcome

Despite decades of effort to improve outcomes, esophageal cancer remains a highly fatal disease. The optimal approach to cure is still debated globally, although a consensus favoring trimodality therapy has emerged in the USA. In this review, after providing a brief update on current standards of therapy in locally advanced esophageal cancer, we focus on one area in which the field is headed: the identification of molecular outcome markers, with the ultimate goal of individualizing therapy according to pretreatment profiles. We attempt to clarify the somewhat unwieldy body of literature in this area, with a focus on adenocarcinoma, keeping the clinician and clinical researcher particularly in mind.