The standard treatment for Dukes C colon cancer (when there are cancer cells in the lymph glands near the colon) is surgery followed by chemotherapy. This has been shown in a number of large research trials to reduce the chance of the cancer coming back and improve survival. Cancerbackup has booklets on colon cancer and on chemotherapy which discuss this in more detail.

Doctors are always trying to improve treatment and a small trial from Germany was carried out a few years ago. This showed that a treatment called edrecolomab (or Panorex) produced a similar benefit to chemotherapy but with less side effects. Panorex is a type of treatment known as a monoclonal antibody. However the number of people taking part in the trial was very small and the researchers carrying out the trial were not confident of the result.

In order to try to find out whether this treatment was as good as it seemed, further trials have now been carried out comparing edrecolomab to chemotherapy in the treatment of Dukes C colon cancer. The treatments have also been used together. However the results have been disappointing, showing that Panorex was not as effective as chemotherapy and that combining it with chemotherapy did not add any benefit.