Resectable colorectal liver metastasis is a cancerous tumor that has spread to the liver from cancer that started in another place in the body. Systemic chemotherapy is known to be an effective treatment of liver metastasis, but its effectiveness with or without cetuximab is unknown. This study aims at comparing the efficacy of systemic chemotherapy with and without cetuximab in patients with resectable colorectal liver metastasis.
This is a multicentre, open-label, randomized, and controlled trial that included 257 patients with KRAS wild-type resectable or suboptimally resectable colorectal liver metastases. The participants were divided equally into two groups; one was assigned to receive chemotherapy with cetuximab, and the other group with cetuximab. The main outcomes of the trial were overall survival, pathological resection status, preoperative response, and safety.
The median progression-free survival in the group with the chemotherapy alone group was 22.2 months, compared to 15.5 months in the chemotherapy with cetuximab group. The median overall survival in the chemotherapy alone group was 81 months, compared to 55.4 months in the chemotherapy with cetuximab group. There was no significant difference in adverse effects between the two groups.
The research concluded that chemotherapy with cetuximab reduced progression-free survival and overall survival in patients with resectable colorectal liver metastasis. Therefore, the use of cetuximab should be avoided in systemic chemotherapy treatment for colorectal liver metastasis.
Ref: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanonc/article/PIIS1470-2045(19)30798-3/fulltext
