Approximately 50% of patients with node-positive colorectal cancer (CRC) will eventually develop liver metastases during their Selleckchem ALK inhibitor disease process (1,2). The median survival of patients with CRHM without

any treatment is 8 to 10 months, and 5-year survival is less than 5% (3,4). With the use of modern combination systemic therapy regimens, median overall survival has increased to 20-24 months (5-8). For selected patients, who undergo surgical resection, a 5-year survival as high as 58% has been reported (9-11). Thus, surgical resection is the gold standard for treatment for patients Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical with CRHM and the only potentially curative therapy. Unfortunately, approximately 80-90% of patients with CRHM are not candidates for surgical resection with intent to cure due to various limitations, including: the presence of extra-hepatic metastases, Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical unfavorable anatomic location of tumor(s), estimated insufficient post-resection functional hepatic reserve (<25-30%), or prohibitive medical co-morbidities. In addition, modern chemotherapy regimens involving oxaliplatin may limit the functional capacity of the liver remnant

due to hepatotoxicity (12,13) (Figure 1). Thus, for the majority of patients, only non-surgical treatment options are available and these can be broadly categorized as systemic therapies or regional hepatic therapies (RHT). Systemic Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical therapies include chemotherapy and/or biologic agents alone or in combination with other modalities, which are intended to downstage initially

unresectable metastases, reduce or stabilize the disease Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical burden in the liver for previously chemotherapy naïve patients at high risk for progression, or as sole treatment for clearly advanced unresectable disease. Figure 1 *Systemic therapy may be given prior to and/or following liver directed treatment. RHT can be further Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical grouped into catheter based treatments such as trans-arterial chemo-embolization (TACE, DEBS, etc), radio-embolization (Ytrrium-90) or immune therapies, such as those offered at our center; regionally infused genetically modified T cells. The other RHT are the local tumor-ablative therapies such as radiofrequency ablation (RFA), microwave ablation (MWA). In recent years, local ablative therapies have become one of the most widely employed modalities to treat initially unresectable CRHM. RFA and MWA are “hot” thermal tumor-ablation Tryptophan synthase treatments that can be used as a component of the initial resection, as components of staged resection, with or without systemic therapy or as standalone treatment strategies for patients with CRHM whom are not initially candidates for resection or are ultimately determined to be unresectable. RFA and MWA are important components of the armamentarium for treating CRHM when surgical resection with negative margins, the gold standard, is not possible due to oncologic, physiologic, or anatomic reasons.