Efficacy and safety of regorafenib in combination with chemotherapy as second-line therapy in patients with metastatic colorectal cancer: A network meta-analysis.

Abstract

115 Background: Recent studies have shown efficacy of chemotherapy (CTX) in combination with different biological agents including regorafenib (REG) in second-line treatment of metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC). As there is no evidence on the relative efficacy and safety of REG as compared to other biological agents in combination with CTX, we evaluated the same in this network meta-analysis (NMA). Methods: Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) comparing efficacy and safety of biological agents + CTX against CTX alone as second-line treatment of mCRC were retrieved from PubMed, EMBASE and Cochrane databases. Progression free survival (PFS) was the primary outcome, while objective response rate (ORR), overall survival (OS) and safety were secondary outcomes. Outcomes were compared by random/mixed-effects NMA using Bayesian (R software, Gemtc package) and frequentist (R software, netmeta package) approaches. Results: Twelve RCTs comparing 9 different treatment regimens with a total of 6805 patients were included for analysis. Hazard ratios (HR)/ odds ratio (OR)/ relative risk (RR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI) for PFS, ORR and grade> 3 adverse events (AE) of selected comparisons from the results of the NMA are shown in table. Conclusions: REG combined with CTX might be a potential alternative to conventional therapeutic options and could be considered as the best option for treating KRAS and BRAF mutated mCRC patients. Future RCTs are needed to confirm our results. [Table: see text]