Options after Chemo

What does the future hold in colorectal cancer treatments?If chemo fails, what options do I have?

they can produce drugs now that will attack a growth factor, so there's this growth factor called epidermal growth factor receptor, so that's on cells. We've known for a long time that it's on cells, we've known that it's increased in colon cancer cells, but now, we actually have a drug that attacks that receptor, that you know, attaches to that receptor and makes it then the other cells can't attach, so the cell doesn't grow as well. So that's how some of these new drugs are being formed. They are going right after the cell and how its growing. So that's one new drug that's called Erbitux or cetuximab that we're using in colon cancer and it's a useful drug.

Is it curing?

It's not curing patients, but it's giving responses, it's shrinking tumor, and you know one day, this drug in combination maybe with another drug will have a cure, but years ago, we didn't even have this drug. So we when patients received chemotherapy and failed, they didn't have anything else to take, and now these drug can work on patients who have failed chemotherapy, they can get responses, so it's a useful drug.