108 - Can we personalize drug therapy in colorectal cancer patients?

For the treatment of metastatic colorectal cancer, the practicing physicians have available a large armamentarium of therapeutic options. The last decade has seen significant advances in survival of metastatic cancer patients compared to the era of single-agent therapy with 5-fluorouracil, mainly due to the approval of novel therapies. Today, clinicians can rely on the use of 4 classical cytotoxic agents (5-fluorouracil, capecitabine, irinotecan, and oxaliplatin) and 3 targeted therapies (bevacizumab, cetuximab, panitumumab). These drugs have a wide variety of antitumor activity and toxicity, and are usually given in combination. For any given patient, the selection of the best therapy is based upon the analysis of risk/benefit for that patient, and takes into account several factors, including tumor histology, pathological features, stage, comorbidities, age, performance status, and other features....