Personalized treatment in patients with colorectal liver metastases.

BACKGROUND

Precision Medicine Initiative is a new research effort aiming to offer personalized treatment in many diseases, including cancer. The aim of the present article is to offer novel insights about the role of personalized treatment in patients with colorectal liver metastases (CRLM).

METHODS

A review of the literature regarding personalized medicine and colorectal liver metastases was performed mainly in the MEDLINE/PubMed database.

RESULTS

Surgical resection remains the only hope for cure of CRLM. Improved surgical strategies to optimize remnant liver volume are recently introduced and gaining ground. Following resection of CRLM scoring systems have been developed by combining certain preoperative factors such as microsatellite instability KRAS expression and sensitivity to immunotherapy with Programmed Death-1 inhibitor.

CONCLUSIONS

Multidisciplinary management of patients with CRLM has markedly contributed to increased survival. While the last several decades have been characterized by these important developments, future advances for patients with CRLM will depend on a better understanding of genomics and molecular biology to facilitate characterization of a specific tumor "identity" so that individualized treatment for each CRLM patient becomes the rule, and not the exception.