title: Anti-metastatic treatment in colorectal cancer: targeting signaling pathways.
abstract: Colorectal cancer is one of the most common cancers worldwide and one of the leading causes of cancer-related death in the Western world. Tumor progression towards metastasis affects a large number of patients with colorectal cancer and seriously affects their clinical outcome. Therefore, considerable effort has been made towards the development of therapeutic strategies that can decrease or prevent colorectal cancer metastasis. Standard treatment of metastatic colorectal cancer with chemotherapy has been improved in the last 10 years by the addition of new targeted agents. The currently used antibodies bevacizumab, cetuximab and panitumumab target the VEGF and EGFR signaling pathways, which are crucial for tumor progression and metastasis. These antibodies have shown relevant efficacy in both first- and second-line treatment of metastatic colorectal cancer. Additionally, other signaling pathways, including the Wnt and HGF/Met pathways, have a well-established role in colorectal cancer progression and metastasis and constitute, therefore, promising targets for new therapeutic approaches. Several new drugs targeting these pathways, including different antibodies and small-molecule tyrosine kinase inhibitors, are currently being developed and tested in clinical trials. In this review, we summarize the new developments in this field, focusing on the inhibitors that show more promising results for use in colorectal cancer patients.
authors.affiliation: Max-Delbrück-Center for Molecular Medicine, Robert-Rössle-Straße 10, 13125 Berlin, Germany. lemosc@gmail.com
authors.forename: Clara
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Lemos
authors.forename: Ulrike
authors.initials: U
authors.lastname: Sack
authors.forename: Felicitas
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Schmid
authors.forename: Manisha
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Juneja
authors.forename: Ulrike
authors.initials: U
authors.lastname: Stein
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D000970:Antineoplastic Agents / Q000494:pharmacology*; D015179:Colorectal Neoplasms / Q000188:drug therapy* / Q000473:pathology; D018450:Disease Progression; D015195:Drug Design; D006801:Humans; D058990:Molecular Targeted Therapy; D009362:Neoplasm Metastasis / Q000517:prevention & control; D015398:Signal Transduction / Q000187:drug effects
chemical_list: D000970:Antineoplastic Agents