• 3-year disease free survival, defined as the percentage of disease free patients 3 year after randomisation. [ Time Frame: study duration ] [ Designated as safety issue: No ]
  

• Overall survival, defined as the percentage of patients alive 5 year after randomisation. [ Time Frame: study duration ] [ Designated as safety issue: No ]
  

The primary therapy of colorectal cancer is surgical resection, but more than half of all colorectal cancer patients eventually die of metastatic disease. Although the introduction of new anticancer agents with efficacy in metastatic colorectal cancer, e.g.: oxaliplatin and irinotecan, and the targeted agents cetuximab and bevacizumab has changed therapeutic nihilism, chemotherapy alone has failed to cure these patients.

It is estimated that 15-20 % of colorectal cancer patients present with synchronous liver metastases and approximately 50% of the patients with colorectal tumors will develop liver metastases at some point during the course of their disease. In almost one third of the cases, the liver was shown at autopsy to be the only site of cancer spread. This is in accordance with the 20% - 45 % five-year survival obtained with surgical resection of hepatic metastases. Previous studies have not shown a clear benefit of adjuvant chemotherapy after metastatectomy of liver metastases. However, most of these studies have been performed with 5-fluorouracil with or without other older cytostatic drugs. Since new effective agents have been developed (e.g.: capecitabine, oxaliplatin and bevacizumab), adjuvant combination treatment with these agents might be more effective. These drugs have proven activity as first line palliative treatment of recurrent metastases. This raises the question if this new effective treatment is of value as an adjuvant treatment after metastatectomy. As mentioned before, a two-arm EORTC study: neoadjuvant and adjuvant FOLFOX vs no chemotherapy in resectable liver metastases of colorectal cancer is almost completed (Nordlinger et al). It is expected that this study will show a 10% 3 year DFS benefit in favour of th treatment arm. Definitive data of this trial will be released at the end of 2006, and will most probably lead to adjuvant treatment post metastasectomy as a standard of care. In the HEPATCIA trial we anticipate on this by using adjuvant XELOX as the control arm.

As mentioned earlier, the 3-year disease free survival in patients post metastatectomy of liver metastases is approximately 25%. There is no data available on the effectivity of the XELOX regimen as adjuvant treatment after metastatectomy of colorectal cancer metastases. The EORTC study was designed to demonstrate a 10% improvement in 3y DFS. Assuming that this study is positive, 3 year DFS would be 35% in the control arm (XELOX post liver resection). Since bevacizumab inhibits angiogenesis, which is required for growth of metastases, this drug may be valuable in the adjuvant setting. Several studies investigate the value of this drug in combination with fluoropyrimidines as an adjuvant regimen after resection of primary colorectal cancers. However, at this moment there is no mature data available of these studies. Therefore, we assume an increase in 3-year disease free survival of 10%, to 45% in the XELOX and bevacizumab treatment arm. This study will therefore evaluate patients with resectable liver metastasis without extra-hepatic disease, investigating whether the capecitabine, oxaliplatin and bevacizumab regimen is superior to capecitabine and oxaliplatin alone applied as adjuvant treatment, in order to extent disease free and overall survival.