New Colorectal Cancer Therapies: Hope on the Horizon

Anita Turk, MD, medical oncologist at IU Health, discusses what she's most excited about in the realm of colorectal cancer therapies, following several positive abstracts coming out of the ASCO Annual Meeting.

"I'm really excited to see how these new therapeutics perform in the adjuvant setting," Turk says. "We've seen that immunotherapy is crucial in the curative, intensive setting, particularly with the success of ATOMIC [NCT02912559]. Now, with BREAKWATER [NCT04607421] demonstrating improved systemic therapy for BRAF-mutant colorectal cancer, an ongoing adjuvant trial is investigating the addition of encorafenib [Braftovi] and cetuximab [Erbitux]] to chemotherapy. I anticipate this will yield exciting results."

Turk adds that, furthermore, several new immunotherapy combinations are in the pipeline, showing early activity in metastatic colorectal cancer. This is promising even for patients who are MMR-proficient or have microsatellite-stable disease.

"It's truly exciting to witness the field advance in this direction," Turk concludes.