Patients with stage III colon cancer didn’t do better or worse if their tumor had mutated KRAS.

Studying KRAS in the tumors of about half the patients in a large clinical trial of chemotherapy for stage III colon cancer, researchers found no differences in disease-free, recurrence-free, or overall survival.  This remained true no matter which chemotherapy the patients received. Read the rest of this entry »

Several studies presented at ASCO looked a biomarkers that might predict cancer recurrence or patient survival in stage II and III colon cancer and whether patients could be chosen to receive chemotherapy based on those markers.  Of special interest was the hypothesis offered by two researchers from the PETACC-3 clinical trial that stage II and stage III may be very different biologically.  As Dr. Arnaud Roth said, “. . .in other words, could be different diseases.” Read the rest of this entry »

Five years after surgery, there was no improvement in either disease-free survival or overall survival when irinotecan was added to standard 5-FU treatments delivered via continous infusion for patients with stage III colon cancer.  Adding irinotecan increased the rate of serious side effects.

The PETACC-3  (Pan European Trial Adjuvant Colon Cancer)  trial was designed to see if adding irinotecan to 5-FU and leucovorin could increase the percentage of stage III patients who were alive and cancer-free (disease-free survival).  It also studied overall survival and relapse-free survival. Read the rest of this entry »