New Targets and New Drug Development in Colorectal Cancer

Despite improvements in clinical outcomes of patients with colorectal cancer (CRC) over the past decades, prognosis remains poor, with a 5-year survival rate of less than 10 %. Fluoropyrimidine-based regimens have defined the standard of care for metastatic disease. However, with the identification of different genetic alterations involved in tumor cell signaling pathways, understanding the molecular pathogenesis of CRC has become of increasing importance in order to select personalized targeted therapies from which patients may potentially benefit. RAS mutations have proven to predict response to anti-epidermal growth factor receptor treatments. Additional hypothetical biomarkers of response, such as BRAF, PI3KCA, and PTEN, are under evaluation in ongoing clinical trials. In this article, we seek to review the recent development of novel drugs aimed to target these molecular aberrations and their impact on metastatic CRC patients.