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The importance of RAS and BRAF in metastatic colorectal cancer – real-world evidence from North-East Romania
RAS genes are prognostic and predictive genetic biomarkers for the anti-EGFR treatment in metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC), having an important impact on treatment management. BRAF mutation is associated with poor prognosis and resistance to anti-EGFR treatment.
We performed a retrospective analysis of patients data diagnosed with mCRC who were tested for RAS and BRAF mutations and treated in RIO Iași from April 2012 to April 2017.
We identified 212 patients in which mutational status of RAS and BRAF was determined. The patients received palliative chemotherapy in association with biological therapies. 24.3% of tumors were located in the right colon, 71% in the left colon and in 4.7% of patients, the primary tumor location couldn’t be evaluated. Most of the tumors were located in the rectum: 32.7%. 47.8% of tumors had KRAS mutation, 23.3% had NRAS mutation, 14.9% had BRAF mutation and only 14% were wild type tumors. Patients with RAS and BRAF wild type tumors had a PFS of 14.2 months, those with RAS mutations a PFS of 12.6 months and those with BRAF mutations a PFS of 10.2 months.
Comparing the results in our study group with literature data, RAS mutations were more frequent in our population and BRAF mutations had a similar prevalence. PFS of first-line treatment was different depending on the mutational status of the tumor. The results were comparable with other studies in literature.
The authors.
This work/ paper/ article was co-funded from the European Social Fund - the Human Capital Operational Programme, Project/ Grant No: POCU/993/6/13/154722.
All authors have declared no conflicts of interest.
