www.impactjournals.com/oncotarget/ Oncotarget, 2017, Vol. 8, (No. 29), pp: 48253-48262 Meta-Analysis Efficacy and safety of different molecular targeted agents based on chemotherapy for gastric cancer patients treatment: a network meta-analysis Zheng Ren1,*, Jinping Sun1,*, Xinfang Sun1, Hongtao Hou1, Ke Li1 and Quanxing Ge1 1Department of Digestive Internal Medicine, Huaihe Hospital of Henan University, Kaifeng 475000, Henan, China *These authors contributed equally to this work Correspondence to: Quanxing Ge, email:
[email protected] Keywords: gastric cancer, molecular targeted agents, chemotherapy, network meta-analysis, efficacy Received: February 09, 2017 Accepted: March 23, 2017 Published: April 18, 2017 Copyright: Ren et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 3.0 (CC BY 3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. ABSTRACT Increasing numbers of reports have been published to demonstrate that molecular targeted agents are able to improve the efficacy of chemotherapy in gastric cancer. This network meta-analysis aimed to evaluate the efficacy and safety of different molecular targeted agents, which were divided into six groups based on the targets including hepatocyte growth factor receptor (c-MET), vascular endothelial factor and its receptor (VEGF/VEGFR), human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2), epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR), mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) and tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI). These six groups of targeted agents were evaluated for their efficacy outcomes measured by overall survival (OS), progression-free survival (PFS) and overall response rate (ORR). While their safety was measured 7 adverse events, including fatigue, anaemia, vomiting, neutropenia, thrombocytopenia, diarrhea and nausea.