Targeted Therapies in Colorectal Cancer: Recent Advances in Biomarkers, Landmark Trials, and Future Perspectives

Abstract

In 2022, approximately 600,000 cancer deaths were expected; more than 50,000 of those deaths would be from colorectal cancer (CRC). The CRC mortality rate in the US has decreased in recent decades, with a 51% drop between 1976 and 2014. This drop is attributed, in part, to the tremendous therapeutic improvements, especially after the 2000s, in addition to increased social awareness regarding risk factors and diagnostic improvement. Five-fluorouracil, irinotecan, capecitabine, and later oxaliplatin were the mainstays of mCRC treatment from the 1960s to 2002. Since then, more than a dozen drugs have been approved for the disease, betting on a new chapter in medicine, precision oncology, which uses patient and tumor characteristics to guide the therapeutic choice. Thus, this review will summarize the current literature on targeted therapies, highlighting the molecular biomarkers involved and their pathways.

Keywords: biomarkers; colorectal cancer; colorectal liver metastasis; liver transplant; oncology; surgical oncology.

Figure 1

Targeted Therapies in Colorectal Carcinoma. Explores the mechanisms involved in the pathophysiology and development of colorectal carcinoma, drug interventions, and their targets within these mechanisms. The drugs mentioned are those approved by the FDA and already used in specific therapeutic strategies to treat CRC. All of these are explored more extensively throughout this review. Produced with biorender.com (accessed on 5 September 2022).