Case Report
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2020. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Clin Cases. Apr 6, 2020; 8(7): 1326-1336
Published online Apr 6, 2020. doi: 10.12998/wjcc.v8.i7.1326
Clinical effects of apatinib mesylate for treatment of multiple brain micrometastases: Two case reports
Jun-Hui Guo, Yuan-Yuan Wang, Jiang-Wei Zhang, Pei-Min Liu, Yan-Jun Hao, Hai-Rui Duan
Jun-Hui Guo, Yuan-Yuan Wang, Jiang-Wei Zhang, Pei-Min Liu, Yan-Jun Hao, Hai-Rui Duan, Department of Oncology, The Second Affiliated Hospital of Henan University of Chinese Medicine, Henan Province Hospital of TCM, Zhengzhou 450002, Henan Province, China
Author contributions: Guo JH acquired and analyzed the data and drafted the manuscript; Wang YY analyzed the data and revised the manuscript; Zhang JW designed the study; Liu PM and Hao YJ acquired the data; and Duan HR analyzed the data.
Supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China, No. 81872032.
Informed consent statement: Written informed consent was obtained from the patients.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors declare no conflicts of interest.
CARE Checklist (2016) statement: The manuscript was prepared and revised according to the CARE Checklist (2016).
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Jun-Hui Guo, MAMS, MPhil, Chief Doctor, Department of Oncology, The Second Affiliated Hospital of Henan University of Chinese Medicine, Henan Province Hospital of TCM, No. 6, Dongfeng Road, Zhengzhou 450002, Henan Province, China. gjunhui2008@163.com
Received: December 17, 2019
Peer-review started: December 17, 2019
First decision: February 20, 2020
Revised: March 5, 2020
Accepted: March 10, 2020
Article in press: March 10, 2020
Published online: April 6, 2020
Core Tip

Core tip: Brain metastases are the most common intracranial tumor, and the average survival time of patients with brain metastases after symptomatic treatment with chemotherapy, radiotherapy, and hormonal drugs is less than 1 year. We report two patients with multiple brain micrometastases after failure of second-line treatment; both had extracerebral metastases. When the patients were treated with apatinib, the intracerebral lesions disappeared, and the extracerebral lesions were partially alleviated. Both patients had a progression-free survival of more than 12 mo and were still stable. Apatinib, a small-molecule oral inhibitor with anti-angiogenic function, may be an option for treating brain metastases.