Davide Ciardiello, Medical Oncologist at Division of Gastrointestinal and Neuroendocrine Tumors at European Institute of Oncology, shared a post on LinkedIn about a recent article he and his colleagues co-authored, adding:
“In recent years, the prognostic and predictive role of HER-2 in colon cancer has been the subject of debate.
Recent evidence supports that HER-2 alterations are associated with a poor prognosis. At the same time, the predictive role of ERBB2 amplifications does not represent a clear mechanism of resistance (HER-2 IHC 2+ cases?) to anti-EGFR drugs. Even less known is the impact of ERBB2 mutations.
In this scenario, with the limitations of an exploratory analysis conducted on a small number of cases, we evaluated the potential role of HER-2 alterations in the response to FOLFIRI+cetuximab in the framework of the CAPRI-2 GOIM clinical trial.
At baseline, the assessment of HER-2 was performed with CGP tests on liquid biopsy (and in most cases also tissue) with the FoundationOne platform.
In total, 6% of cases had ERBB2 amplifications and/or mutations.
Our analysis confirmed the unfavorable prognostic role of HER-2.
At the same time, we observed that patients with ERBB2 mutations in almost all cases had a very short PFS. These data are in line with data from Germani MM et al. JCO 2025.
Larger case studies will be needed to confirm the results, however I am increasingly convinced that pathogenic mutations in ERBB2 represent a mechanism of resistance to anti-EGFR drugs in mCRC.”
Title: HER-2 gene alterations as biomarker in patients with metastatic colorectal cancer treated with FOLFIRI + cetuximab: findings from the CAPRI-2 GOIM study
Authors: D. Ciardiello, L. Boscolo Bielo, S. Napolitano, E. Martinelli, T. Troiani, E. Cioli, T. P. Latiano, E. Maiello, P. Parente, A. Avallone, A. De Stefano, R. Bordonaro, A. E. Russo, C. Lotesoriere, S. Vallarelli, S. Pisconti, C. Nisi, E. Tamburini, M. G. Viola, S. Lonardi, C. Cremolini, D. Iacono, P. Tagliaferri, F. Pietrantonio, G. Tortora, G. Rosati, M. G. Zampino, G. Curigliano, A. Febbraro, N. Normanno, F. De Vita, N. Fazio, F. Ciardiello, G. Martini
Read the Full Article on ESMO Gastrointestinal Oncology
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