Skip to main content
An official website of the United States government

Profiling and Targeting Dynamic Tumor Resistance in Patients with Metastatic Colorectal Cancer, The ASCEND-CRC Trial

Trial Status: approved

This early phase I trial tests the safety, side effects, and how well certain drug/therapy combinations that are targeted to individual patients based on characteristics of their disease types may help to control the disease in patients with colorectal cancer that has spread from where it first started (primary site) to other places in the body (metastatic). Approximately 60–70% of patients with metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC) respond to first-line therapy, though a substantial proportion will ultimately experience disease progression despite initial response. Key barriers blocking the potential efficacy of alternative targeted therapies are the inability to identify and personalize the therapeutic approach in all lines of therapy, as tumors evolve and develop resistance mechanisms, and biomarkers identified to date have been based on archival material traditionally collected at a single time point prior to treatment with first line therapy and/or do not represent the metastatic disease site or tumor evolution. Using a biomarker-based prospective biopsies, paired serial blood samples, and patient outcomes throughout first-, second-, and third line standard-of-care (SOC) therapy or experimental therapies may help create a new personalized interventional approach to treat patients with metastatic colorectal cancer.