What Will AngioPredict Do?
There are several treatment opportunities for patients with advanced Colorectal Cancer. Two of the most popular treatments, anti-EGFR therapy and Bevacizumab therapy do not work for everyone.
| Anti-EGFR Therapy | Treatments which utilise EGFR inhibitors can help to limit the growth of the cancer. However, patients with a mutated KRAS gene will not benefit from this treatment. |
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| Bevacizumab therapy | Bevacizumab therapy is another option, but there is ample evidence, that not everyone responds well to this treatment. It is universally agreed that the use of this treatment will be greatly influenced by the availability of predictive biomarkers. |
Common practice is to currently administer combined Bevacizumab therapy to most patients, irrespective of their suitability to the treatment. This is unadvisable, due to side effects associated with Bevacizumab therapy:
| Reasons to avoid unnecessary combination Bevacizumab therapy: |
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| Hypertension |
| Proteinuria |
| Haemorrhage |
| GI perforations |
| Congestive heart failure |
| Reversible posterior leukoencephalopathy syndrome |
The future of advanced Colorectal Cancer therapy lies in personalised treatments, which take into consideration each individuals specific case and develops a treatment plan suited for them. It is the goal of the AngioPredict to provide a platform which will allow doctors to determine which individuals are suited for combined Bevacizumab therapy through the identification of predictive biomarkers.
| The AngioPredict Project Will |
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| 1. Use a multi-dimensional strategy to identify 'predictive biomarkers' that will help predict which patients will benefit from combination with Bevacizumabd, and which won't. |
| 2. These biomarkers, once identified, will be further integrated into companion diagnostic tests. This will ultimately serve to create validated methods to predict patient response. |
| 3. Once patients are stratified by their response to different treatments, they can be directed towards alternative therapies, sparing them from the negative treatment-related side effects listed above. |
| 4. As patient groups are streamlined and refined, this will decrease adverse responders and prevent unnecessary suffering. |
