Editorial
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2015. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. Mar 14, 2015; 21(10): 2871-2874
Published online Mar 14, 2015. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v21.i10.2871
Targeted therapy in first line treatment of RAS wild type colorectal cancer
Vincenzo Formica, Mario Roselli
Vincenzo Formica, Mario Roselli, Medical Oncology Unit, “Tor Vergata” University Hospital, 00133 Rome, Italy
Author contributions: Formica V wrote the paper; and Roselli M revised the scientific content of the paper
Conflict-of-interest: Authors have no conflict of interest to declare related to the present article.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Vincenzo Formica, MD, PhD, Medical Oncology Unit, Department of Internal Medicine, “Tor Vergata” University Hospital, Viale Oxford 81, 00133 Rome, Italy. vincenzo.formica@uniroma2.it
Telephone: +39-6-20908190 Fax: +39-6-20903806
Received: November 17, 2014
Peer-review started: November 18, 2014
First decision: December 26, 2014
Revised: January 8, 2015
Accepted: February 11, 2015
Article in press: February 11, 2015
Published online: March 14, 2015
Abstract

The debate on the optimal drug combination for treating chemotherapy-naïve patients with metastatic colorectal cancer has recently become particularly heated. The present editorial will review recent data on this topic. The FIRE-3 and PEAK trials have shown a 7.5 to 12 mo survival advantage with the use anti-epidermal growth factor receptor (anti-EGFR) antibodies. The CALGB 80405 has shown no difference between anti-EGFR and anti-vascular endothelial growth factor agents. All three trials have consistently shown a significant increase in objective response rate. These data suggest that there is a subset of metastatic colorectal cancer patients, rigorously selected by molecular profiling, who particularly benefit from an anti-EGFR-based regimen in the first-line setting.

Keywords: Colorectal cancer, Bevacizumab, Cetuximab, Panitumumab, RAS

Core tip: Three new randomized head-to-head trials have explored the use of anti-epidermal growth factor receptor and anti-vascular endothelial growth factor targeted agents in chemotherapy-naïve metastatic colorectal cancer patients not carrying activating mutations of RAS proteins.