CSCO guidelines for metastatic colorectal cancer: personalized medicine in clinical practice.

Colorectal cancer (CRC) is the second most common can-cer in China, the morbidity and mortality rates of which are rapidly increasing1,2. Among newly-diagnosed CRC patients, 20％ have metastatic disease at the time of presentation and an additional 25％ present with localized disease and will sub-sequently develop metastases3. The treatment of metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC) is gradually moving towards the era of precision therapy, which involves guided treatment based on individual genetic characteristics4. Since the first edition of the Chinese Society of Clinical Oncology (CSCO) guide-lines was published in 2017, the guidelines have been updated annually according to the latest clinical trial findings5-9. Herein we summarize how the CSCO guidelines enable tailor-made treatments of mCRC with different molecular characteristics (Figure 1).