Molecular mechanisms of cetuximab resistance in metastatic colorectal cancer / 国际肿瘤学杂志

ABSTRACT

Cetuximab has become an important molecular targeted drug for the treatment of metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC), which increases the curative effect of chemotherapy and prolongs the survival time. However, some patients develop insensitiveness or resistance to cetuximab, while the complicated molecular mechanisms are not quite clear. With the deep research in epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) signaling pathway, the genetic alteration of KRAS, BRAF, PTEN and PIK3CA and polymorphism of microRNA (miRNA) have been proved to associated with cetuximab resistance. Wnt signaling pathway with its negative regulator RNF43 is also considered to be related with cetuximab resistance in recent studies. The review of the progress on molecular mechanisms of cetuximab resistance in mCRC can establish theoretical basis for finding out reasonable drugs to overcome the resistance.