The options for treating metastatic colorectal cancer are limited after failure of second-line chemotherapy. In this case report, we present the outcome of a 59-year-old male patient who underwent radical resection for rectal cancer in November 2018 and hepatectomy for liver metastasis in January 2021. His metastatic rectal cancer presented a remarkable response to the combination of fruquintinib and toripalimab after the failure of multiline chemotherapies. The patient achieved partial response within 3 months and clinical complete response of pulmonary masses within 12 months. As of now, the patient maintains a good quality of life, and the progression-free survival has been more than 17 months. In conclusion, the combination of fruquintinib and PD-1 inhibitors can improve the prognosis of metastatic colorectal cancer.

Plain language summary

The available antitumor treatment options are very limited for patients with advanced colorectal cancer (a type of colon cancer), especially after multiple treatments have already failed. Often for patients in this situation, the available treatments do not work very well and the patients are not predicted to live very long. However, in this paper we report a case of successful treatment of this condition. A 59-year-old male patient with advanced colorectal cancer was treated with the combination therapy of two different immunotherapy drugs, fruquintinib and toripalimab, after multiple other treatments had failed. Currently, the survival time of this patient is over 17 months, and he has a satisfactory quality of life.

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Papers of special note have been highlighted as: • of interest; •• of considerable interest

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Vol. 16, No. 2

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History

Received 29 November 2023

Accepted 5 December 2023

Published online 19 December 2023

Published in print February 2024

Information

Keywords

Author contributions

All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection and analysis were performed by L Kong, K Li and Y Zheng. The first draft of the manuscript was written by L Kong, and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Financial disclosure

The authors have no financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript. This includes employment, consultancies, honoraria, stock ownership or options, expert testimony, grants or patents received or pending, or royalties.

Competing interests disclosure

The authors have no competing interests or relevant affiliations with any organization or entity with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript. This includes employment, consultancies, stock ownership or options and expert testimony.

Writing disclosure

No writing assistance was utilized in the production of this manuscript.

Ethical conduct of research

The authors state that they have obtained verbal and written informed consent from the patient for the inclusion of their medical and treatment history within this case report.

Data sharing statement

The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current research are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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