Successful treatment of metastatic colorectal cancer with apatinib: report of two cases and literature review

Abstract

Minghong Bi,* Jingru Yang,* Yaping Wang, Haoran Zhang, Zhenyuan Gao, Hairong Zhou, Mohan Shi Department of Medical Oncology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Bengbu Medical College, Bengbu, Anhui Province, People’s Republic of China *These authors contributed equally to this work Abstract: Apatinib, a novel small molecule tyrosine kinase inhibitor that inhibits vascular endothelial growth factor receptor-2, was approved for metastatic gastric adenocarcinoma in China in Oct 2014. This is the first report on its use for advanced colorectal cancer as a kind of third-line therapy to date. Here we report two Chinese patients who presented with metastatic colorectal cancer who received apatinib 850 mg daily as a third-line therapy. Both the patients achieved favorable benefits in outcomes after the administration of apatinib. Patient 1 benefited 4 months progression-free survival and 11 months overall survival, while patient 2’s progression-free survival was over 10 months. Both the patients presented hand–foot syndrome, and one of them suffered a slight impairment of liver function, mild elevated blood pressure, and proteinuria. But these adverse events were manageable with symptomatic treatment and dose reduction or a short-time drug withdrawal. Keywords: vascular endothelial growth factor, large intestine cancer, apatinib, targeted therapy, antiangiogenesis, tyrosine kinase inhibitor

Keywords

• vascular endothelial growth factor
• colorectal cancer
• apatinib
• targeted therapy