
Last year in the UK over 60,000 cancer patients enrolled on clinical trials aimed at improving cancer treatments and making them available to all.
This trial looked at cetuximab on its own or with irinotecan for bowel cancer that had spread to another part of the body (advanced bowel cancer).
Doctors often use chemotherapy to treat advanced bowel cancer. One of the drugs they use is irinotecan (Campto).
They can also use a type of targeted cancer drug called cetuximab (Erbitux). People often have this alongside chemotherapy, but researchers wanted to see how well it worked on its own.
The research team looked at how well these treatments worked for people with and without changes (mutations) in specific genes. They think that changes in genes may affect how well treatments work.
In this trial some people had cetuximab alone, some had it with irinotecan.
Please note: In order to join a trial you will need to discuss it with your doctor, unless otherwise specified.
Dr Harpreet Wasan
Australasian GastroIntestinal Trials Group (AGITG)
Experimental Cancer Medicine Centre (ECMC)
Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust
Merck Serono
NIHR Clinical Research Network: Cancer
Freephone 0808 800 4040
Last year in the UK over 60,000 cancer patients enrolled on clinical trials aimed at improving cancer treatments and making them available to all.