• Cindy Neuzillet, Benoît Rousseau, Hemant Kocher, Philippe Bourget, and Christophe Tournigand.
• INSERM UMR1149, Bichat-Beaujon University Hospital (AP-HP - PRES Paris 7 Diderot), 46 rue Henri Huchard, 75018 Paris, and 100 boulevard du Général Leclerc, 92110 Clichy, France; Department of Medical Oncology, Henri Mondor University Hospital, AP-HP, Paris Est Créteil University (UPEC), 51 avenue du Maréchal de Lattre de Tassigny, 94010 Créteil, France; Tumour Biology Laboratory, Barts Cancer Institute, Queen Mary University of London, Charterhouse Square, London EC1M 6BQ, United Kingdom; Barts and The London HPB Centre, The Royal London Hospital, Whitechapel, London, E1 1BB, United Kingdom. Electronic address: cindy.neuzillet@gmail.com.
• Pharmacol. Ther. 2017 Jun 1; 174: 145-172.

AbstractUntil the 1990s, cytotoxic chemotherapy has been the cornerstone of medical therapy for gastrointestinal (GI) cancers. Better understanding of the molecular biology of cancer cell has led to the therapeutic revolution of targeted therapies, i.e. monoclonal antibodies or small molecule inhibitors directed against proteins that are specifically overexpressed or mutated in cancer cells. These agents being more specific to cancer cells were expected to be less toxic than cytotoxic agents. Targeted agents have provided clinical benefit in many GI cancer types. For example, antiangiogenics and anti-EGFR therapies have significantly improved survival of patients affected by metastatic colorectal cancer and have deeply changed the therapeutic strategy in this disease. However, their effects have sometimes been disappointing, due to intrinsic or acquired resistance mechanisms (e.g., RAS mutation for anti-EGFR therapies), or to an activity restricted to some tumour settings (e.g., lack of activity in other cancer types, or on the microscopic residual disease in adjuvant setting). Many studies are negative in overall population but positive in some specific patient subgroups (e.g., trastuzumab in HER2-positive gastric cancer), illustrating the importance of patient selection and early identification of predictive biomarkers of response to these therapies. We propose a comprehensive two-part review providing a panoramic approach of the successes and failures of targeted agents in GI cancers to unravel the pharmacologic opportunities and future directions for these agents in GI oncology. In this first part, we will focus on adenocarcinomas and squamous cell carcinomas, for which targeted therapies are mostly used in combination with chemotherapy.Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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