The study, entitled "Assessing the TP53 marker type in patients Treated with or without neoadjuvant chemotherapy for resectable colorectal liver metastases: a p53 Research Group study" was published in February 2015, the European Journal for Surgical Oncology.
The most important results:
- Without chemotherapy (surgery only), patient survival was the same - despite a different marker status.
- With a pre-operative chemotherapy, there were distinct anomalies in the survival of patients with different marker statuses. Patients with a mutated p53 marker status had a fivefold increased risk of dying than patients with a normal p53 marker status.
- The 5-years survival rate of these patients only amounted to 22 percent, whilst the survival rate for patients with a normal p53 marker status lay at 60 percent.
- In the case of patients with a mutated p53 marker status, the chemotherapeutic treatment even resulted in a poorer survival rate then a purely surgical treatment.
“For the first time, this study has been able to show that the p53 marker only predicts the response to chemotherapy and is therewith purely predictive. The results also mean that, in the case of patients with liver metastases and a mutated p53 marker, the pre-operative chemotherapy with 5FU/axaliplatin causes considerable harm,” said Prof. Dr. Daniela Kandioler.