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Personalizing Maintenance Therapy in Metastatic Colorectal Cancer

  • Personalized Medicine in Colorectal Cancer (D Cunningham and EC Smyth, Section Editors)
  • Published:
Current Colorectal Cancer Reports

Abstract

Purpose of Review

Current systemic management of MCRC should include periods of intensive and less intensive treatment or even complete stop. Different systemic post-induction strategies have been evaluated in many trials. The aim of this article is to review the available data on maintenance strategies in MCRC and potential options to personalize choice of the respective strategy.

Recent Findings

Despite the large variability of clinical trials conducted in this setting, it can be concluded that intermittent chemotherapy does not seem to be inferior to continuous chemotherapy if at least 3 months of intensive induction treatment is applied, and active maintenance seem to be superior to complete stop after at least 3 months of induction treatment in terms of PFS and may add some benefit in terms of OS. The choice of the respective maintenance strategy may be personalized taking into account disease and patient characteristic, choice of induction treatment and response, treatment tolerability and quality of life.

Summary

Patients with metastatic colorectal cancer and no options of secondary resection or local ablation should be considered for a personalized maintenance approach.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Oncology, Haematology, Bone Marrow Transplantation with Section Pneumology, University Cancer Center Hamburg, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Martinistraße 52, 20246, Hamburg, Germany

    Julia Quidde & Alexander Stein

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  1. Julia Quidde
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  2. Alexander Stein
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Correspondence to Julia Quidde.

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Conflict of Interest

Julia Quidde has received compensation from Servier for service as a consultant.

Alexander Stein has received research funding through grants from Roche, Sanofi, and Merck, and has received compensation from Roche, Sanofi, Merck, Amgen, Lilly, Bayer, and Servier for service as a consultant.

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This article does not contain any studies with human or animal subjects performed by any of the authors.

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Quidde, J., Stein, A. Personalizing Maintenance Therapy in Metastatic Colorectal Cancer. Curr Colorectal Cancer Rep 13, 205–211 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11888-017-0365-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11888-017-0365-6

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