It is hard to point you to one place that discusses all the research on chemotherapy for colon cancer.

For early stage disease (stages II and III) chemo usually lasts about six months.

For more advanced stage IV disease, chemotherapy is very rarely a treatment that leads to cure of the cancer. It does prolong life, sometimes for several years, and reduces symptoms from the tumor.

There are several different chemotherapy drugs and combinations of drugs. Usually a patient begins with one combination, takes it until it is no longer working to keep the cancer in check, and then moves on to the next one.

When the burden of chemotherapy outweighs its advantages, patients can decide to stop treatment.

It is important, however, to realize that surgery CAN produce long-term remissions, sometimes even cures for stage IV colorectal cancer. So getting a surgeon’s opinion is vitally important.

Currently there are no trials for colorectal cancer for rexin-g, and it is not FDA approved for colorectal or any other cancer.

A clinical trial studying rexin-g for colon cancer that had spread to the liver was planned to start in 2002, but never opened because it did not receive institutional review board (IRB) approval. We do not know further details about this terminated clinical trial.

For more information about where to find active clinical trials studying rexin-g, use the NCI Clinical Trials Advanced Search and choose rexin-g from the Drug list.