Roche GI cancer therapy as good as FOLFOX

Swiss drug major Roche presented overall survival results from a 14-month follow-up of the Phase III NO16966 study confirming that its  oral Xelox - Xeloda (capecitabine) plus oxaliplatin - is comparable to  FOLFOX-4  in the first-line treatment of metastatic colorectal cancer at  the American Society of Clinical Oncology Gastro-intestinal Cancers  Symposium in California, USA.

Study NO16966 was a large, randomized, Phase III trial of 2,034 advanced  colorectal cancer patients that initially compared first-line Xelox  versus FOLFOX-4 . Patients receiving Xelox lived for a median of 19  months, while patients receiving FOLFOX-4 lived for a median of 18.5  months. The consistency of these results were also further demonstrated  in a subset population from the original two-arm part of the study.

The most common adverse events (greater than or equal to 20%) of Xeloda  monotherapy were diarrhea, nausea, stomatitis and hand-foot  syndrome.