Neoadjuvant chemotherapy for colon cancer

Abstract

Promising results of neoadjuvant therapy have encouraged changes in treatment standards for many types of cancer, including triple negative and HER-positive breast cancer, gastric cancer, rectal cancer, etc. Preoperative chemotherapy can decrease the tumor burden, which might reduce the volume of surgery; it also improves the disease prognosis by reducing the number of viable tumor cells and micrometastases in regional lymph nodes; it increases the proportion of patients receiving systemic treatment, which often leads to an improved overall survival of patients; it enables the evaluation of tumor sensitivity to therapy, which also allows the investigation of tumor sensitivity to new pharmacological agents. However, colon cancer seems to stay away from these trends. This literature review focuses on studies analyzing neoadjuvant therapy for resectable colon cancer and analyzes the role of preoperative therapy in this disorder.