Most patients with stage II colon cancer will be fine after surgery, with little risk that their cancer will come back.

But one in five will have cancer spread beyond their colon.

Better information about which patients will relapse could spare many from the risks of chemotherapy.

A new gene test announced at the 2011 Gastrointestinal Cancer Symposium in San Francisco helps provide answers to which patients are at highest risk and could help patients and their doctors make better decisions about follow-up chemotherapy after surgery.

ColoPrint, an 18 gene tumor tissue signature, found that three out of four patients with stage II colon cancer had only about a 5 percent risk of recurrence, very similar to stage I patients.  For the remaining high risk patients, one in five (20 percent) had cancer return.

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Taking a daily multivitamin didn’t improve survival or reduce the risk that colon cancer would come back for stage III patients enrolled in a clinical trial of chemotherapy after surgery.

Although about half of patients in the trial took a multivitamin supplement during their treatment, the vitamin didn’t improve their outcomes, nor did it reduce side effects.  At the same time, multivitamin use didn’t have a detrimental effect. Read the rest of this entry »

How likely is it that an individual colon cancer will return?

Stage II colon cancer patients have a tough time knowing how likely it is that their cancer will recur and making a decision about having chemotherapy after surgery.

A test is now on the market that can help with that decision.  OncoType DX® Colon Assay analyzes 12 key genes from a tumor sample to produce a recurrence score that indicates how likely stage II colon cancer will return.

While OncoType DX Colon can’t predict whether chemotherapy will reduce the chance that cancer will come back, it can help patients and their doctors decide on chemotherapy in combination with other factors.

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Here’s a second article from C3 research advocate, Pam McAllister, based on information she learned at the 2010 GI Cancers Symposium in Orlando.

Pam’s experience with colorectal cancer research advocacy goes back more than a decade.  She has been a patient advocate with several cancer cooperative groups and now chairs the Radiation Therapy Oncology Group (RTOG) Patient Advocacy Committee.

While most patients with stage II colon cancer are at low risk of recurrence, there are patients in this group who are at increased risk and who may need chemotherapy to reduce their risk. Read the rest of this entry »

Update from 2010 GI Cancers Symposium

Colon cancer patients over 70 actually had a greater reduction in disease-free survival than did younger ones with a new regimen of Xeloda® and oxaliplatin compared to older IV 5-FU treatments according to a new analysis reported at the GI Cancers Symposium in Orlando.

With the bolus IV 5-FU and leucovorin regimens, stage III colon cancer patients over 70 had about a 60 percent chance of being alive and free from cancer three years after surgery. With a combination of Xeloda (capecitabine) and oxaliplatin in a treatment called XELOX, their three-year disease-free survival was 66 percent.

Younger patients had about a 3 percent absolute improvement between the two treatments from 69 percent to 72 percent. Read the rest of this entry »