A study that sought to find some benefit to adding the drug cetuximab, also known as Erbitux, to standard chemotherapy treatment following surgical intervention found that adding the drug added no benefit to colon cancer patients over receiving standard therapy.
This research, conducted by the Mayo Clinic and published in the most recent issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, involved almost 2,700 patients with advanced stage colon cancer.
Researchers added the drug to the standard regimen known as FOLFOX (leucovorin, fluorouracil, oxaliplatin). When patients are given FOLFOX following surgery their cure rate goes up to 50 percent and is considered standard adjuvant treatment.
This study used three-year disease-free survival as a metric, and found that patients who received only the FOLFOX combination chemotherapy after surgery had a three-year disease-free survival between 67-75 percent, while those who received FOLFOX and Erbitux had a three-year disease-free survival of between 65-72 percent.
Researchers could not account for the results of this negative study.
Source: JAMA
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