Avastin Helps Patients Maintain Chemotherapy Effectiveness

It doesn’t hurt to stop XELOX chemotherapy combined with Avastin after six treatments and continue with Avastin alone until colorectal cancer gets worse, according to a study reported at the 2010 Annual Meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology in Chicago.

Many patients have to stop oxaliplatin chemotherapy with before getting its maximum effectiveness because of peripheral neuropathy — tingling, numbness, or pain in their hands and feet.  Xeloda® (capecitabine) can cause painful skin redness and cracking on the hands and feet or hand-foot syndrome, which can also affect time on chemotherapy.

Giving only six treatments of Avastin® (bevacizumab) plus XELOX chemotherapy and then stopping XELOX and using only Avastin until cancer progressed was as effective for the initial or first-line treatment of colorectal cancer as continuing XELOX.  XELOX combines Xeloda® (capecitabine) with oxaliplatin.

In addition, the strategy reduced both severe peripheral neuropathy and hand-foot syndrome.

Continue reading…

Posted by Kate Murphy on June 21st, 2010
Posted in: Research & Treatment News | No Comments »
Tags: Avastin, bevacizumab, chemotherapy, metastatic colorectal cancer, Xeloda

Hedgehog Fails to Help Advanced Colorectal Cancer Patients

In disappointing news, adding the Hedgehog inhibitor GDC-0449 to standard chemotherapy failed to increase the time before advanced colorectal cancer got worse.

Researchers compared progression-free survival between patients who got either FOLFOX or FOLFIRI chemotherapy with Avastin and a group who got the same chemo regimen with GDC-0449. There was no difference Continue reading…

Posted by Kate Murphy on June 18th, 2010
Posted in: Research & Treatment News | No Comments »
Tags: clinical trials, Hedgehog, metastatic colorectal cancer

Adding Erbitux to First Line Chemotherapy Helps Advanced Colorectal Cancer Patients with Wild Type KRAS

Does adding Erbitux to chemotherapy help people whose colorectal cancer has spread beyond the colon or rectum to distant body sites?

The answer is yes, according to a pooled analysis of two large randomized clinical trials comparing chemotherapy alone to chemotherapy plus Erbitux® (cetuximab).  However, benefits depend on whether or not patient tumors have mutations of two genes, KRAS and BRAF.

Previous studies have shown that only patients with normal or wild type KRAS get any benefit from EGFR inhibitors Erbitux or Vectibix™ (panitumumab) so a combined analysis of the CRYSTAL and OPUS studies looked only a outcomes in KRAS wild type tumors.  In addition, the research team studied the effect of mutations to BRAF.

They found that adding Erbitux to initial chemotherapy improved overall survival time, time until cancers got worse (progression-free survival), the percent of tumors that shrank with treatment (overall response rate) for tumors with wild-type KRAS.  The best outcomes were in patients who had both wild-type KRAS and wild-type BRAF. Continue reading…

Posted by Kate Murphy on June 15th, 2010
Posted in: Research & Treatment News | No Comments »
Tags: BRAF mutations, cetuximab, colorectal cancer prognosis, Erbitux, KRAS mutations, metastatic colorectal cancer

Young People with Advanced Colorectal Cancer Do As Well with Chemotherapy as Older Patients

Colondar Models Erika and Cathy

When colorectal cancer spreads to other parts of the body, young people under 50 who get chemotherapy benefit as much as those who are older.

With drug combinations, there is no difference between those under 50 and those who are 50 and older in responding to chemotherapy, how long it takes before cancer gets worse, or in survival time. Continue reading…

Posted by Kate Murphy on June 10th, 2010
Posted in: Research & Treatment News | 2 Comments »
Tags: ASCO, metastatic colorectal cancer, young patients

No Need to Do Surgery Immediately for Patients with Advanced Colon Cancer

A study from Memorial Sloan Kettering recently showed that patients who have stage IV disease, which means spread to other organs, don’t need to undergo surgery immediately. If the tumor does not cause problems such as obstruction or bleeding, patients appear to do better to start with chemotherapy right away without delay because of the surgery. Continue reading…

Posted by Heinz-Josef Lenz, MD on November 5th, 2009
Posted in: From the Desk of Dr. Lenz | 2 Comments »
Tags: metastatic colorectal cancer, surgery, Treating Colorectal Cancer