TAS‑102 plus bevacizumab as salvage treatment in colorectal cancer: A retrospective study

The current study aimed to evaluate the efficacy and safety of TAS-102 plus bevacizumab therapy as a salvage treatment for colorectal cancer, focusing on the differences between colon and rectal cancers. The present single-center retrospective study enrolled 101 patients treated with TAS-102 between October 2016 and December 2023 (median age, 67 years; 65 men and 36 women). The tumors included 16, 23 and 62 lesions in the right colon, left colon and rectum, respectively. The chemotherapy history included fluoropyrimidine (101 patients, 100%), oxaliplatin (95 patients, 94.1%), irinotecan (82 patients, 81.2%), anti-vascular endothelial growth factor antibody (92 patients, 91.1%) and anti-epidermal growth factor receptor antibody (41 patients, accounting for 87.2% of the RAS wild-type subgroup). The median duration of TAS-102 plus bevacizumab treatment was 184 days. A subsequent line of chemotherapy was administered in 66 patients (65.3%). The progression-free survival (PFS) time was 5.6 months, whereas the overall survival (OS) time was 14.2 months. Colon and rectal cancers exhibited a PFS of 4.0 and 6.9 months, and an OS of 11.0 and 17.6 months, respectively. The results of the present study suggested that TAS-102 combined with bevacizumab in subsequent treatment may have greater efficacy in rectal cancer than in colon cancer, possibly due to the lower frequency of liver metastases in rectal cancer. However, this finding is exploratory and requires further validation via larger prospective studies.