A recent Cancer Research UK-funded clinical trial, FOxTROT, has demonstrated that delivering chemotherapy before surgery can reduce colon cancer recurrence risk by 28%. Led by scientists from the University of Birmingham and the University of Leeds, the trial involved 1,053 colon cancer patients from 85 hospitals across the UK, Denmark, and Sweden. Participants who received six weeks of chemotherapy before surgery were less likely to experience cancer recurrence within two years.
The FOxTROT trial’s findings suggest that delivering chemotherapy before surgery is a cost-effective and efficient way of treating colon cancer. The treatment can be easily adopted by healthcare systems globally and potentially save at least 5,000 colon cancer patients in the UK and hundreds of thousands of patients worldwide every year. According to Dr. Sundeep Saluja, Professor of Surgical Gastroenterology at GB Pant Hospital, New Delhi, “timely treatment can save more lives” and administering chemotherapy before surgery can increase the chance of receiving treatment, especially for the elderly.
Thanks to funding from Cancer Research UK, doctors worldwide can implement these findings into clinical practice, offering a new way of reducing colon cancer recurrence risk without the need for expensive new drugs or technologies. The FOxTROT trial’s results have the potential to transform cancer care globally, particularly in low- and middle-income countries where cancer treatments are often prohibitively expensive. Delivering chemotherapy before surgery is a simple yet effective way of preventing cancer recurrence and could potentially save thousands of lives every year.
