Even in colorectal cancer patients with wild-type KRAS mutations, there was no increase in overall survival time or in the time it took before cancer progressed when Erbitux® (cetuximab) was added to FOLFOX or CAPOX chemotherapy.

More tumors got smaller with Erbitux treatment, but there was an increase in both serious gastrointestinal toxicity and severe skin rash when the drug was added.

Patients with tumor mutations in any of three genes — KRAS, BRAF, or NRAS — had poorer survival. Read the rest of this entry »

On Monday, April 25th, Fight Colorectal Cancer held a free patient webinar that tackled the somewhat complex but fascinating topic of personalized medicine.

Personalized medicine is what the cancer community calls treatments that are tailored to each patient’s genetic makeup. It is the future of cancer care and in some cases, it is already making a big difference in the ways patients are treated.

You can learn about these cutting edge treatments and about emerging findings in an archive of the webinar below.

Our thanks to Carolyn Grande, CRNP, AOCNP for leading the discussion. She a phenomenal educator on this topic and a member of our Medical Advisory Board. She graciously donated her time to bring this information to patients.

Dr. Edith Mitchell

Last night, Dr. Edith Mitchell of Thomas Jefferson University Kimmel Cancer Center in Philadelphia, PA, updated colorectal cancer patients on the latest research and treatment news in an online webinar.

Dr. Mitchell highlighted the most important news for colon and rectal cancer patients to come from the 2011 Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium held in San Francisco last month. She answer such questions as…

“Can doctors determine the chances that my cancer may return?”

“Can my doctors determine if I need chemotherapy?”

“Does Avastin or Erbitux benefit my stage III cancer treatment?”

“Are there any promising new treatments on the horizon?”

Read the rest of this entry »

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. Read the rest of this entry »

Adding Erbitux® (cetuximab) to standard chemotherapy for stage III colon cancer didn’t improve patient outcomes and added more side effects.

All of the patients in the NO147 trial had cancer that had spread to their lymph nodes and had surgery before beginning chemotherapy. They had normal or wild-type KRAS genes in their tumors.They were randomly assigned to FOLFOX chemotherapy for 6 months or FOLFOX plus Erbitux. 

The trial was closed before the planned number of patients were enrolled because an analysis showed that there was no benefit to the additional Erbitux and continuing the trial would not help patients. Read the rest of this entry »