Radiotherapy is a vital treatment option for patients with
nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC). Concurrent
cisplatin-based
radiochemotherapy with or without
adjuvant chemotherapy had acquired good clinical effects with good local control rates. However, a number of patients present with
metastasis following systemic regimens or initial diagnosis of locally advanced NPC, which cause difficulty for subsequent
therapy. Therefore, there is an urgent requirement to discover novel targeted
therapies. The present report describes one case of a patient with NPC and multiple
metastases. The patient was treated with systemic
therapy in combination with
bevacizumab, palliative
radiotherapy and
chemotherapy following treatment with
cetuximab and
concurrent chemoradiotherapy in 2015. Following the addition of
bevacizumab,
metastases were reduced or disappeared after >2 months, and the duration of progression-free survival was 7 months.
Bevacizumab is a
monoclonal antibody that targets
VEGF, and it is associated with angiogenesis, which causes the growth, invasion and progression of
tumors. In previous studies,
bevacizumab has been approved for the treatment of several types of malignant
cancer and it has been able to effectively improve prognosis. In the present review, the effect of adding
bevacizumab to systemic
therapy for the treatment of NPC was analyzed, with a particular focus on advanced and metastatic diseases. A growing number of phase I/II clinical trials involving
bevacizumab for NPC have been conducted with clinical outcomes showing improved rates of overall survival and progression-free survival as well as improvements in the quality of life of patients. However, severe or deadly toxicities can also result from combination treatment with
bevacizumab. In the future,
bevacizumab may become a common addition to systemic
therapy for the treatment of locally advanced and metastatic NPC.