Dr. Heinemann on Surrogate Markers Beyond PFS in Patients With CRC

Volker Heinemann, MD, PhD, director of the Comprehensive Cancer Center at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, discusses surrogate markers aside from progression-free survival (PFS) in studying patients with colorectal cancer (CRC).

Until recently, PFS has been the most popular surrogate endpoint predictive of survival and has also been used in registration trials, Heinemann says. With the addition of targeted therapies to the landscape of CRC, it was found that PFS was losing its predictive power as a marker, he explains.

PFS is no longer a very approrpriate marker to use for overall survival. However, other and perhaps better endpoints to use, he adds, include first-line treatment response rate, depth of response, and tumor shrinkage.