Dr Volker Heinemann presents data on the German phase III clinical trial FIRE-3 during a press conference at the 2013 ASCO Annual Meeting in Chicago.

The trial reported that first-line cetuximab plus FOLFIRI chemotherapy (folinic acid, fluorouracil, irinotecan) offers a roughly four-month survival advantage for patients with metastatic colorectal cancer, compared with bevacizumab plus FOLFIRI.

The targeted drugs cetuximab and bevacizumab, both in combination with chemotherapy, are approved and commonly used as initial therapy but, until this study, it has been unclear which approach is better for patients with non-mutated forms of the KRAS gene.

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