Combination of interferons and cytostatic drugs for treatment of advanced colorectal cancer

Role of Cellular Biomolecules in Screening, Diagnosis and Treatment of Colorectal Cancer

Background:

Prevention is the primary strategy to avoid the occurrence and mortality of colorectal cancer. Generally, the concentrations of tumor markers tested during the diagnosis and believed to assist the detection of disease in the early stages of cancer. Some of the biomarkers are also important during treatment and real-time monitoring of the progress of treatment.

Methods:

We considered a rationale search of key references from the database of peer-reviewed research and review literatures of colorectal cancer. The topic of search was focused on the novel methods and modern techniques of Screening, Diagnosis, and Treatment of colorectal cancer. The screened publications were critically analysed using a deductive content analysis and the matter was put in separate headings and sub headings.

Results:

It was found that endoscopic examination, early detection, and surgery are some of the common strategies to manage colorectal cancer because late stages are difficult to treat due to the high-cost requirement and fewer chances of survival. As far as chemotherapy is concerned, systemic chemotherapy has been shown to offer the maximum benefit to patients with cancer metastasis. Among different chemotherapy measures, primary colorectal cancer prevention agents involve pharmaceuticals, phytochemicals, and dietary supplements are some of the standard options.

Conclusion:

In this review article, we have provided a comprehensive analysis of different biomarkers for the detection of colorectal cancer as well as different formulations developed for efficient treatment of the disease. The use of dietary supplements, the combinatorial approach, and nanotechnology-based strategies for colorectal cancer diagnosis and treatment are some of the recent and modern methods of cancer management.

Combination treatment with intrahepatic arterial infusion and intratumoral injection chemotherapy in patients with far-advanced hepatocellular carcinoma and arterioportal or arteriovenous shunts: preliminary results

Background/Aims

Combination treatment consisting of hepatic arterial infusion chemotherapy with epirubicin and cisplatin (HAIC-EC) and systemic infusion of low-dose 5-fluorouracil (5-FU) are sometimes effective against advanced hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). However, there is no effective treatment for advanced HCCs with arterioportal shunts (APS) or arteriovenous shunts (AVS).

Methods

We investigated a response and adverse events of a new combination protocol of repeated HAIC-EC and percutaneous intratumoral injection chemotherapy with a mixture of recombinant interferon-gamma (IFN-γ) and 5-FU (PIC-IF) in patients with far-advanced HCCs with large APSs or AVSs.

Results

There was a complete response (CR) for the large vascular shunts in all three patients and for all tumor burdens in two patients. Significant side effects were flu-like symptoms (grade 2) and bone marrow suppression (grade 2 or 3) after each cycle, but these were well-tolerated.

Conclusions

These results suggest that the combination of HAIC-EC and PIC-IF is a new and promising approach for advanced HCC accompanied by a large APS or AVS.