Where Are We Now and Where Might We Be Headed in Understanding and Managing Brain Metastases in Colorectal Cancer Patients?

This article reviews the pioneering strategies aiming at understanding, diagnosing, and managing this disease, and discusses future directions, challenges, and potential innovations in each of these domains.Highlights• With the increasing survival in CRC, brain and other rare/late-onset metastases are rising.• Distal colon/rectal primary location, long-standing progressive lung metastases, and longer survival are risk factors for BM development in CRC.• Late diagnosis and lack of consensus treatment strategies make BM-CRC diagnosis very dismal.• Liquid biopsies using circulating tumor cells might offer excellent opportunities in the early diagnosis of BM-CRC and the search for therapeutic options.• Multi-modality treatment including surgical metastatic resection, postoperative SRS with/without WBRT, and chemotherapy is the best current treatment option.• Recent mid-sized clinical trials, case reports, and preclinical models show the potential of unconventional therapeutic approaches as monoclonal antibodies, targeted therapies, and immunotherapy.Graphical abstract
Source: Current Treatment Options in Oncology - Category: Cancer & Oncology Source Type: research