Current possibilities of predicting the therapeutic response to neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy in rectal cancer
Abstract
Neoadjuvant chemotherapy in combination with radiation is currently the standard of care for patients with locally advanced rectal cancer. The main purpose of the treatment is to reduce the risk of recurrence, however at the same time it may be accompanied by severe adverse effects due to post-radiation pelvic damage.
An effort towards finding markers allowing the prediction of the therapy response has been undertaken by many groups. In this review we have performed a literature search to identify the main studies directed at the use of clinical, radiological, immunological and molecular (protein, DNA and RNA) markers.
We present a summary for each group with an overall conclusion that a certain level of ambiguity and disunity in interpretation of the results currently exists among the reported findings. Apparently, even in the most promising direction of circulating molecular bio-markers further work is needed before a clinical utility can be established.