Efficacy and safety of aflibercept in metastatic colorectal cancer pretreated with bevacizumab: A report of five cases

Aflibercept is a recombinant fusion protein that acts by inhibiting tumoural angiogenesis. Efficacy data obtained in the VELOUR randomised study has contributed to the approval of aflibercept as a second-line metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC) treatment following an oxaliplatin-based regimen. The present study reports a case series of five patients with mCRC, who were treated in two centres since 2011 in the Compassionate Use Program for aflibercept. All patients had a KRAS mutation and previously received palliative fluoropyrimidine-oxaliplatin-based chemotherapy with bevacizumab. A doublet with irinotecan combined with aflibercept was administered until progression of disease. The majority of patients received a greater number of aflibercept cycles than the median reported in the VELOUR study (12 vs. 7 cycles), with manageable and reversible toxicity. The most frequent adverse events observed were diarrhoea, neutropenia, fatigue, proteinuria and hypertension. Most cases obtained a progression-free survival greater than the median reported in the VELOUR study (11 vs. 6.9 months) and, in a subgroup of patients previously treated with bevacizumab, and a median survival time of ~47 months was reached from the initial treatment of the disease. The present study contrasts the efficacy and safety results obtained from the pivotal VELOUR trial, and confirms that aflibercept, used in routine clinical practice outside of the clinical trial environment, is active and well-tolerated following bevacizumab treatment.