Publications by authors named "Punt C"

Background: Patients with colorectal liver-only metastases (CRLM) eligible for local treatment (resection/ablation) do not always receive this potentially curative treatment due to the lack of clear resectability criteria and expertise in centres not performing liver surgery. We evaluated the potential value of a liver expert panel in daily practice.

Methods: All patients with CRLM starting with systemic treatment in centres not performing liver surgery between 2016 and 2020 were identified in the Netherlands Cancer Registry.

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Colorectal cancer patients with ≤10 unresectable metastases were treated with single-fraction sub-ablative radiotherapy in addition to standard of care systemic therapy in a single-arm, open-label, multicenter, pilot study (SIRIUS) to assess feasibility and safety. Results indicate that radiotherapy combined with systemic therapy is feasible and safe in this population.

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Background: RECIST may not be optimal for assessing treatment response with current systemic regimens. We evaluated RECIST, morphologic, and pathologically documented response (pathological response) in patients with initially unresectable colorectal cancer liver-only metastases (CRLM).

Patients And Methods: Four hundred and eighty-nine patients from the phase III CAIRO5 trial were included who were treated with FOLFOX/FOLFIRI/FOLFOXIRI and bevacizumab or panitumumab.

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Background: Results from the phase III KEYNOTE-177 study established pembrolizumab as a new first-line standard of care for microsatellite instability-high or mismatch repair-deficient (MSI-H/dMMR) metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC). Previous results from KEYNOTE-177 showed a statistically significant and clinically meaningful improvement in progression-free survival (PFS) with pembrolizumab versus chemotherapy ± bevacizumab/cetuximab in MSI-H/dMMR mCRC. Results after >5 years of follow-up are reported.

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Objectives: Total tumor volume (TTV) is associated with overall and recurrence-free survival in patients with colorectal cancer liver metastases (CRLM). However, the labor-intensive nature of such manual assessments has hampered the clinical adoption of TTV as an imaging biomarker. This study aimed to develop and externally evaluate a CRLM auto-segmentation model on CT scans, to facilitate the clinical adoption of TTV.

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Article Synopsis
  • Patients with colorectal cancer and liver-only metastases showed improved outcomes when treated with FOLFOXIRI and bevacizumab compared to FOLFIRI and bevacizumab or with panitumumab, especially regarding progression-free survival and resection rates.
  • The CAIRO5 trial involved 530 patients with initially unresectable liver metastases from colorectal cancer, evaluated across numerous centers in the Netherlands and Belgium, focusing on different treatment combinations based on tumor genetics.
  • While more effective responses were observed with certain treatments, there was an increase in toxic side effects, particularly in specific genetic tumor variants like RAS/BRAFV600E.
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Circulating cell-free DNA (cfDNA) assays for monitoring individuals with cancer typically rely on prior identification of tumor-specific mutations. Here, we develop a tumor-independent and mutation-independent approach (DELFI-tumor fraction, DELFI-TF) using low-coverage whole genome sequencing to determine the cfDNA tumor fraction and validate the method in two independent cohorts of patients with colorectal or lung cancer. DELFI-TF scores strongly correlate with circulating tumor DNA levels (ctDNA) (r = 0.

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Structural variants (SVs) caused by chromosomal rearrangements in common fragile sites or long interspersed nuclear element (LINE) retrotranspositions are highly prevalent in colorectal cancer. However, methodology for the targeted detection of these SVs is lacking. This article reports the use of formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded targeted-locus capture (FFPE-TLC) sequencing as a novel technology for the targeted detection of tumor-specific SVs.

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Background: Rift Valley fever virus, a pathogen to ruminants, camelids, and humans, is an emerging mosquito-borne bunyavirus currently endemic to Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. Although animals are primarily infected via mosquito bites, humans mainly become infected following contact with infected tissues or fluids of infected animals. There is an urgent need for adequate countermeasures, especially for humans, because effective therapeutics or vaccines are not yet available.

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Article Synopsis
  • This study aimed to determine how different patients with metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC) respond to two chemotherapy regimens, FOLFOXIRI and FOLFOX/FOLFIRI, both combined with a drug called bevacizumab.
  • Researchers developed a predictive model using clinical and molecular data from 639 patients to estimate 2-year mortality, and validated it with data from three other trials involving over 1,000 patients.
  • The analysis revealed that while the model could estimate 2-year mortality fairly well, it struggled to accurately predict which specific patients would benefit more from one treatment over the other across the different trial groups.
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  • The study evaluated the prognostic significance of total tumor volume (TTV) in predicting early recurrence and overall survival in patients with colorectal liver metastases (CRLM) who received systemic therapy followed by local treatment.
  • Results showed that both baseline TTV and changes in TTV after treatment were significantly associated with early recurrence and overall survival, while conventional measures like RECIST1.1 did not show predictive value.
  • Findings were validated in an external patient cohort, confirming that TTV provides important prognostic information beyond traditional clinical factors for patients with initially unresectable CRLM.
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  • * Results showed that NLM patients generally had better overall survival (OS) and progression-free survival (PFS) than LM patients in first-line and second-line chemotherapy, while OR rates were higher for LM patients overall.
  • * The findings indicate that LM serves as a negative prognostic factor in mCRC, supporting its use in stratifying patients in future clinical trials.
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  • The CAIRO4 study aimed to determine if upfront primary tumor resection (PTR) combined with systemic therapy improves overall survival in patients with synchronous unresectable metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC).
  • Conducted in The Netherlands and Denmark, the trial involved 206 patients who were randomly assigned to receive either PTR plus systemic therapy or systemic therapy alone, with the primary endpoint being overall survival.
  • Results showed that median overall survival was slightly higher for the upfront PTR group (20.1 months) compared to the no PTR group (18.3 months), but the difference was not statistically significant (P = 0.32), indicating no clear benefit from adding PTR to treatment.
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Background And Purpose: The CardioSwitch-study demonstrated that patients with solid tumors who develop cardiotoxicity on capecitabine or 5-fluorouracil (5-FU) treatment can be safely switched to S-1, an alternative fluoropyrimidine (FP). In light of the European Medicines Agency approval of S-1 in metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC), this analysis provides more detailed safety and efficacy information, and data regarding metastasectomy and/or local ablative therapy (LAT), on the mCRC patients from the original study.

Materials And Methods: This retrospective cohort study was conducted at 12 European centers.

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Treatment guidelines for colorectal cancer (CRC) are primarily based on the results of randomized clinical trials (RCTs), the gold standard methodology to evaluate safety and efficacy of oncological treatments. However, generalizability of trial results is often limited due to stringent eligibility criteria, underrepresentation of specific populations, and more heterogeneity in clinical practice. This may result in an efficacy-effectiveness gap and uncertainty regarding meaningful benefit versus treatment harm.

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For patients with colorectal cancer liver metastases (CRLM), the genetic mutation status is important in treatment selection and prognostication for survival outcomes. This study aims to investigate the relationship between radiomics imaging features and the genetic mutation status (KRAS mutation versus no mutation) in a large multicenter dataset of patients with CRLM and validate these findings in an external dataset. Patients with initially unresectable CRLM treated with systemic therapy of the randomized controlled CAIRO5 trial (NCT02162563) were included.

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Introduction: Accurate clinical staging of rectal cancer is hampered by suboptimal sensitivity of MRI in the detection of regional lymph node metastases. Consequently, some patients may be understaged and have been withheld neoadjuvant (chemo)radiotherapy in retrospect. Although Dutch guidelines do not advocate adjuvant chemotherapy (ACT) in rectal cancer, some of these clinically understaged patients receive ACT according to local policy.

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Article Synopsis
  • Researchers developed deep learning models to automate the segmentation of tumors and assess total tumor volume (TTV) in patients with colorectal liver metastases (CRLM).
  • The study used CT scans from 259 patients, dividing them into training, validation, and testing sets, resulting in highly accurate segmentation models with a global Dice similarity coefficient of 0.86 for CRLM.
  • The findings suggest that these models can significantly reduce the workload for radiologists by allowing for quick and reliable TTV assessments in patients with CRLM.
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Background: An increasing proportion of colorectal cancer (CRC) cases in Europe are detected by screening with faecal immunochemical testing (FIT). Previous studies showed that population screening with FIT leads to a decrease in CRC incidence and to detection at an earlier stage. However, approximately twenty percent of patients with CRC without metastases at initial diagnosis still develop metachronous metastases.

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JCO Whether adjuvant hyperthermic intraperitoneal chemotherapy (HIPEC) might prevent peritoneal metastases after curative surgery for high-risk colon cancer is an ongoing debate. This study aimed to determine 5-year oncologic outcomes of the randomized multicenter COLOPEC trial, which included patients with clinical or pathologic T4N0-2M0 or perforated colon cancer and randomly assigned (1:1) to either adjuvant systemic chemotherapy and HIPEC (n = 100) or adjuvant systemic chemotherapy alone (n = 102). HIPEC was performed using a one-time administration of oxaliplatin (460 mg/m, 30 minutes, 42°C, concurrent fluorouracil/leucovorin intravenously), either simultaneously (9%) or within 5-8 weeks (91%) after primary tumor resection.

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Unlabelled: Metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC) is a heterogeneous disease that can evoke discordant responses to therapy among different lesions in individual patients. The Response Evaluation Criteria in Solid Tumors (RECIST) criteria do not take into consideration response heterogeneity. We explored and developed lesion-based measurement response criteria to evaluate their prognostic effect on overall survival (OS).

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Background: It is unclear whether curative-intent local therapy of metastases is of similar benefit for the biological distinct subgroup of patients with deficient mismatch repair (dMMR) metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC) compared with proficient mismatch repair (pMMR) mCRC.

Patients And Methods: In this nationwide study, recurrence-free (RFS) and overall survival (OS) were analyzed in patients with dMMR versus pMMR mCRC who underwent curative-intent local treatment of metastases between 2015 and 2018. Subgroup analyses were performed for resection of colorectal liver metastases (CRLM) and cytoreductive surgery ± hyperthermic intraperitoneal chemotherapy (CRS ± HIPEC).

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Background: Patients with initially unresectable colorectal cancer liver metastases might qualify for local treatment with curative intent after reducing the tumour size by induction systemic treatment. We aimed to compare the currently most active induction regimens.

Methods: In this open-label, multicentre, randomised, phase 3 study (CAIRO5), patients aged 18 years or older with histologically confirmed colorectal cancer, known RAS/BRAF mutation status, WHO performance status of 0-1, and initially unresectable colorectal cancer liver metastases were enrolled at 46 Dutch and one Belgian secondary and tertiary centres.

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Background: Current knowledge on prognostic biomarkers (especially BRAF /RAS mutations) in metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC) is mainly based on mCRC patients with proficient mismatch repair (pMMR) tumors. It is uncertain whether these biomarkers have the same prognostic value in mCRC patients with deficient mismatch repair (dMMR) tumors.

Methods: This observational cohort study combined a population-based Dutch cohort (2014-2019) and a large French multicenter cohort (2007-2017).

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Background: Consensus on resectability criteria for colorectal cancer liver metastases (CRLM) is lacking, resulting in differences in therapeutic strategies. This study evaluated variability of resectability assessments and local treatment plans for patients with initially unresectable CRLM by the liver expert panel from the randomised phase III CAIRO5 study.

Methods: The liver panel, comprising surgeons and radiologists, evaluated resectability by predefined criteria at baseline and 2-monthly thereafter.

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