‘Great Urgency’ to Understand KRAS as an Actionable Marker in Lung Cancer

Learning about KRAS and earlier checkpoint inhibition

• Studies are seeking to understand more about KRAS as an actionable marker in lung cancer
• Other research is looking to move checkpoint inhibitors into earlier stage treatment
• Enrolling your patients in clinical trials can help advance these therapies

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As cancer treatment evolves into precision medicine, certain markers are emerging as actionable targets for therapy, including G12C inhibitors for the KRAS gene. KRAS is considered to be the most mutated oncogene in human cancers. At least three different mutations in this gene are associated with lung cancer.

“I think right now, there’s definitely great urgency to understand KRAS as an actionable marker,” Dr. Balazs Halmos, medical oncologist and director of the Thoracic Oncology Program at Montefiore Medical Center, tells SurvivorNet Connect. “We want to finish the KRAS studies quickly, so we can learn in which particular setting G12C inhibitors will be helpful and quickly get them to our patients.”

Another area of interest is moving checkpoint inhibitors earlier into therapy. “I think our expectation is that the cure rates could be really significantly improved,” Dr. Halmos says. He adds that there is also great interest in the use of checkpoint inhibition in the neoadjuvant space.

He encourages other oncologists to consider their patients for clinical trials looking to advance these therapies into the clinic. “We want to support them very strongly as a community,” he says.