What this Trial Is About

Adjuvant chemotherapy has been widely adopted worldwide for locally advanced colon cancer. However, more and more studies have found better efficacy and potential advantages of perioperative or neoadjuvant chemotherapy. The sooner the systemic chemotherapy is received, the better suppression it has on activity of tumor growth factors. Pre-operative chemotherapy may eliminate tiny metastases. It may also shrink the invasion of tumor before surgery, and thus reducing operational trauma and expediting recovery. With advances in radiology and tomography, staging before surgery is accurate enough to identify risks and prognosis for patients. The phase II trial conducted by our department has yielded encouraging results (N=47, CapeOX regimen, clinicaltrials.gov NCT02415829): after the neoadjuvant chemotherapy, no subject had disease progression, 68.1% subjects reached complete or partial response. Besides, the toxicity of neoadjuvant CapeOX chemotherapy was acceptable. The present randomized controlled phase III trial will be conducted to further compare efficacy and safety of the neoadjuvant and adjuvant CapeOX chemotherapy for patients with locally advanced resectable colon cancer in China. This study may have two periods, each will last for approximately 5 years. After the first period (n=994), if the results of the test group are better than the control group, the study will be terminated. Otherwise, the study will enter into period 2 (n=376) through selecting out genetically sensitive subjects and repeating the same trial process as period 1.

Perioperative Versus Postoperative CapOX Chemotherapy for Locally Advanced Colon Cancer