Capecitabine plus oxaliplatin compared with fluorouracil and folinic acid as adjuvant therapy for stage III colon cancer

PURPOSE: This multicenter, randomized trial compared capecitabine plus oxaliplatin (XELOX) with bolus fluorouracil (FU) and folinic acid (FA) as adjuvant therapy for patients with stage III colon cancer. PATIENTS AND METHODS: Patients who had undergone curative resection were randomly assigned to XELOX (oxaliplatin 130 mg/m2 on day 1 plus capecitabine 1,000 mg/m2 twice daily on days 1 to 14 every 3 weeks for 24 weeks) or a standard bolus FU/FA adjuvant regimen (Mayo Clinic for 24 weeks or Roswell Park for 32 weeks). The primary study end point was disease-free survival (DFS). RESULTS: The intention-to-treat population comprised 1,886 patients; 944 patients were randomly assigned to XELOX and 942 to FU/FA (Mayo Clinic, n _ 664; Roswell Park, n _ 278). After 57 months of follow-up for the primary analysis, 295 patients (31.3%) in the XELOX group had relapsed, developed a new primary colon cancer, or died compared with 353 patients (37.5%) in the FU/FA group (hazard ratio [HR] for DFS, 0.80; 95% CI, 0.69 to 0.93; P _ .0045). The 3-year DFS rate was 70.9% with XELOX and 66.5% with FU/FA. The HR for overall survival (OS) for XELOX compared to FU/FA was 0.87 (95% CI, 0.72 to 1.05; P _ .1486). The 5-year OS for XELOX and FU/FA were 77.6% and 74.2%, respectively. Follow-up is ongoing. Preplanned multivariate and subgroup analyses supported the robustness of these findings. CONCLUSION: The addition of oxaliplatin to capecitabine improves DFS in patients with stage III colon cancer. XELOX is an additional adjuvant treatment option for these patients.Daniel G. Haller, Josep Tabernero, Jean Maroun, Filippo de Braud, Timothy Price, Eric Van Cutsem, Mark Hill, Frank Gilberg, Karen Rittweger and Hans-Joachim Schmol