Comparing fruquintinib with placebo for treating patients with previously treated metastatic colorectal cancer: a plain language summary of the FRESCO-2 study

Comparing fruquintinib with placebo for treating patients with previously treated metastatic colorectal cancer: a plain language summary of the FRESCO-2 study What is this summary about?This summary describes an article about a study called FRESCO-2.The goal of FRESCO-2 was to investigate whether people living with cancer of the colon or rectum that had spread to other organs in the body, known as metastatic colorectal cancer, lived longer taking a medicine called fruquintinib than people taking a placebo (an inactive pill that would not affect the cancer, such as a sugar pill).Fruquintinib is a medicine taken by mouth, as a capsule, that slows the development of blood vessels around a tumor, reducing the chance that it will get bigger or spread.FRESCO-2 included adults who had received all available standard treatments for their cancer, including fluoropyrimidine, oxaliplatin, and irinotecan chemotherapy.Patients were assigned, by chance, to take fruquintinib (461 patients) or placebo (230 patients) once daily for 3 weeks, followed by 1 week off when they did not take fruquintinib or placebo (known as a treatment cycle).Patients continued to take fruquintinib or placebo (alongside supportive treatment to help them to feel as well as possible) in 4-week treatment cycles until their cancer worsened, or until they had a harmful side effect.