Metastatic colorectal cancer

Metastatic colorectal cancer remains a public-health issue on a global scale. With development of a new generation of cytotoxic agents, survival has improved for patients with metastatic disease. How to maximize the benefit of chemotherapy with acceptable toxicity remains incompletely answered. Hepatic resection can provide a significant hope for long term survival, and a subset of patients might benefit from perioperative approaches. More recently, specific molecular processes have been targeted for therapeutic interventions, and encouraging results have been achieved using inhibitors of the Epidermal Growth Factor Receptor and the Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor.