Loading...
In metastatic colon cancer, the use of either a chemotherapy holiday or maintenance therapy after an initial period of treatment remains controversial. In studies of these approaches, maintenance chemotherapy improved progression-free survival (PFS) but usually not overall survival when compared with chemotherapy-free intervals.
Investigators now report results of the randomized, open-label, phase III PRODIGE 9 study, involving 487 evaluable patients with stage IV colorectal cancer who responded to induction treatment with 12 cycles of FOLFIRI plus bevacizumab and were then assigned to maintenance with bevacizumab or observation. Most patients had left-sided tumors (58%–64%), had the primary tumor resected (58%), had more than one metastatic…