New Promise for Early Stage Colon Cancer Patients

About ColoPrint® for Stage II & III Colon Cancer Prognosis and Prediction

ColoPrint is a microarray-based gene expression profile for predicting the risk of distant recurrence of stage II and III colon cancer patients.  Currently in the final stage of development, the combination of this profile and selected clinical factors could prove even more powerful and accurate in identifying high risk patients for more personalized clinical management.

 

Overview of Colon Cancer

Colorectal cancer is the third most common cancer worldwide following lung and breast.  As with all cancers, chances of survival are good for patients when the cancer is detected in an early stage. Stage I patients have a survival rate of ~90% while the 5-year survival rate drops to ~70-80% in stage II patients and to 45-70% in stage III patients.(1,2)  Following ASCO or ESMO recommendations, chemotherapy should be made available to stage III patients following surgery, if they are well enough to tolerate it.  The use chemotherapy in stage II tumors should be discussed by patients and their oncologists and remains a subject of debate.(3-5)

 

Despite numerous clinical trials, the benefit of adjuvant chemotherapy for stage II colon cancer patients is uncertain.(6) Three-fourths of patients are cured by surgery alone and therefore, less than 25% of patients would benefit from additional chemotherapy. The identification of patients that are most likely to develop recurrent disease would help identify those patients who should be treated with adjuvant chemotherapy after surgery. Current pathological prediction factors, including staging, have not proven sufficient to identify “high risk” patients in this subgroup. For example, the finding that patients with stage IIB have a worse prognosis than patients with stage IIIA indicates the need to find better prognostic factors.(1)  Other clinical parameters such as grade, number of lymph nodes assessed or vascular invasion are not consistently utilized by all physicians in the same manner.  Additionally, the magnitude of risk conferred by these characteristics cannot be reliably estimated from available data.(3)

 

For more information on ColoPrint, please read: ColoPrint For Early Stage Colon Cancer Patients

References

1)  Ries LAG, Harkins D, Krapcho M, Mariotto A, Miller BA, Feuer EJ, Clegg L, Eisner MP, Horner MJ, Howlader N, Hayat M, Hankey BF, Edwards BK (eds) (2005) . SEER Cancer Statistics Review, 1975-2003, National Cancer Institute. Bethesda, MD, http://seer.cancer.gov/csr/1975_2003/, based on November 2005 SEER data submission, posted to the SEER web site, 2006.

2)  Coleman MP, Rachet B, Woods LM, Mitry E, Riga M, Cooper N, Quinn MJ, Brenner H, Esteve J. (2004) Trends and socioeconomic inequalities in cancer survival in England and Wales up to 2001. Br J Cancer 90 :1367-73.

3)  van Cutsem EJ, Kataja VV, ESMO GuidelinesTask Force (2005) ESMO Minimum Clinical Recommendations for diagnosis, adjuvant treatment and follow-up of colon cancer. Ann Oncol. 16 Suppl 1:i16-7

4)  Benson AB, Schrag D, Sommerfield MR et al. (2004) ASCO recommendations on adjuvant chemotherapy for stage II colon cancer. J Clin Oncol 22(16):3408-19

5)  Sobrero A and Koehne CH. (2006) Should adjuvant chemotherapy become standard treatment for patients with stage II colon cancer? Lancet Oncol 7:515-17

6)  Andre T, Sargent D, Tabernero J. et al. (2006) Current Issues in Adjuvant Treatment of Stage II Colon Cancer. Ann. Surg. Oncol. 13;887-98