Clinical, pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic evaluations of metronomic UFT and cyclophosphamide plus celecoxib in patients with advanced refractory gastrointestinal cancers.

"Conflict of interest The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest."

"The authors thank Prof. Franco Bocci and Michele Andreuccetti. The study has been supported, in part, by the Italian Association for Cancer Research (AIRC) and the Istituto Toscano Tumori (ITT) to G.B., the Fondazione per le Attività di Ricerca in Oncologia (F.A.R.O.) of Pontedera to G.A. Dr. R.S.K. is supported by a tier 1 Canada research Chair and by a grant from the Ontario Inst. For Cancer Research (OICR)."

"Ethical standardsThe study was approved by the local ethics committee and registered in the European Clinical Trial Database EudraCT (http://eudract.emea.europa.eu; EudraCT registration number 2007-000065-38), and patients were informed of the investigational nature of the study, providing their written informed consent. All the experiments comply with the current Italian laws."