New regimens with less toxicity and good compliance are needed to enhance tumor response and complete remission rate in patients with rectal cancer. Unfortunately, these agents did not improve the tumor response and were more toxic than NCRT alone. Studies have investigated the effects of oxaliplatin or targeted agents added to NCRT in patients with advanced rectal cancer. Attempts have been made to introduce more toxic chemotherapeutic agents and biologics to the conventional NCRT regime. Therefore, it is essential to enhance the tumor response to attain good oncological results in such patients. Īlthough NCRT is associated with reduced locoregional recurrence of rectal cancer, some patients develop locoregional recurrence, leading to poor oncologic outcomes. However, its effect on tumor downstaging or pCR has not been better than that of NCRT. The usefulness of neoadjuvant chemotherapy for rectal cancer has been explored to avoid NCRT-associated radiation toxicity. Tumor downstaging and pathologic complete response (pCR) after NCRT for rectal cancer are associated with good survival outcomes when compared with non-response to NCRT. The standard treatment for patients with locally advanced rectal cancer is neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy (NCRT) before radical surgery to reduce locoregional recurrence and the toxicity of chemoradiation. Cleaved caspase-3 level following treatment with Abnoba Viscum Q® was higher in SNU-503R80Gy cells than in SNU-503 cells.Ĭolorectal cancer, one of the most common solid tumors, is the third leading cause of cancer-related deaths and the second leading cause of mortality amongst malignancies worldwide. More apoptotic cells were noted in MG samples than in the NMG samples on TUNEL staining. The toxicities during NCRT were minimal in both groups. Tumor response was significantly better in the MG than in the NMG in terms of pathologic complete response rate (53.3% vs. A better tumor response in the MG, relative to the NMG, was observed with respect to tumor regression grade (TRG), T stage, and overall tumor–node–metastasis stage. There was no difference in the clinical stage between the two groups.
Baseline demographics between the two groups were similar, except carbohydrate antigen 19-9 levels and tumor location from the anal verge. Overall, the study included 52 patients (MG: n = 15 NMG: n = 37). The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver ( ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made.