Promising Results from the First-Ever Trial of a Drug that Blocks Cancer Gene KRAS

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Piro Lito, Bob Li, and Neal Rosen in the lab

From left: Physician-scientists Piro Lito, Bob Li, and Neal Rosen are developing new targeted treatments for lung cancer.

Update: On January 30, 2021, Memorial Sloan Kettering lung cancer expert Bob Li presented results from the registrational phase II trial of sotorasib at the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer’s World Conference on Lung Cancer Presidential Symposium. This multicenter, international study enrolled 126 people.

The researchers reported that 100 patients experienced disease control, meaning that their tumors either shrank or stopped growing. Of those, 46 patients had their tumors shrink substantially, and half of them were still responding to the drug ten months later. Nine people had to stop taking the drug because of side effects.

This research resulted in a Breakthrough Therapy Designation for sotorasib from the US Food and Drug Administration, and regulatory filings have been submitted to the FDA and European Medicines Agency. Further clinical trials of the drug are ongoing. 

Targeted therapies aim to block the activity of genes that cause cancer, providing a direct attack on tumors while sparing healthy cells. Identifying genes that trigger tumor growth is only the first hurdle to developing targeted drugs — just because investigators know a gene may cause cancer doesn’t mean they can prevent it from wreaking havoc.

The cancer gene KRAS (pronounced “kay-rass”) is a case in point. It’s been studied for about 40 years and is known to be responsible for many of the most common cancers. This includes about one-quarter of lung cancers and between one-third and one-half of colon and rectal cancers. Until recently, however, the KRAS protein was considered an “undruggable” target.

On September 20, 2020, in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), investigators reported results from CodeBreak 100, the first-ever clinical study of a drug that directly targets KRAS. In this international phase 1 trial, researchers found that a drug called sotorasib (AMG 510) slowed or stopped cancer growth in many people with advanced cancer that had a KRAS mutation. The investigators say much more research is needed to determine how to best use this drug, but this trial is a significant first step.

KRAS was one of the first cancer genes discovered and is the most common cancer-driver gene.

“Sotorasib is not a cure, but this study is the first to crack KRAS in a clinically meaningful way,” says Memorial Sloan Kettering medical oncologist Bob Li, a senior investigator and corresponding author of the study. “It’s an important step forward, but it’s not yet a home run.”

Shutting Down Cancer Growth

The challenge in targeting the KRAS gene comes from the uncommon shape of the KRAS protein. Most proteins have a lumpy, irregular shape, with many clefts and pockets where a drug can wedge in. When this happens, a drug can act as a key, locking up a protein and shutting down its activity. “By contrast, the KRAS protein is quite round and smooth,” Dr. Li explains. “There’s no lock-and-key approach.”

In 2013, researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, reported there may be a way in: They found a small pocket in a version of the mutant KRAS protein, called KRAS-G12C, and designed a drug to fit into this pocket when it was open.

In 2016, MSK physician-scientists Piro Lito and Neal Rosen published a study that built on this work. They described the trapping mechanism that enables the new class of drugs to shut down the growth of cancer cells driven by the KRAS-G12C mutation.

“When one of these drugs goes in the protein’s pocket, it traps KRAS-G12C in its ‘off’ state,” says Dr. Lito, who is also a senior author on the new NEJM paper. “The protein can’t wake up, and the tumor cell cannot grow.”

Sotorasib, which was developed by investigators at the biopharmaceutical company Amgen, is an improved and more potent KRAS-G12C inhibitor. Combining their respective strengths in phase 1 clinical trial development and translational science, Drs. Li and Lito partnered with Amgen to bring the first-in-class KRAS-G12C inhibitor sotorasib to patients.

Promising Findings from an International Trial

In the trial for sotorasib, 129 people whose tumors had KRAS-G12C received the drug, which is taken as a pill. Fifty-nine of them had non-small cell lung cancer, 42 had colorectal cancer, and 28 had other types of tumors. All of the study participants had disease that spread to other parts of the body; they already had received an average of three previous treatments. The trial included people treated at more than two dozen hospitals around the world.

Among those 59 people with lung cancer, seven patients did not respond and 52 experienced disease control (which means that their tumors either stopped growing or shrank). In that group of 52, 19 patients had their tumors shrink substantially. The average time until the disease got worse was about six months. “That level of response is significant for this population of patients because most of them have exhausted other treatment options.” Dr. Li explains.

We're already thinking one step ahead about how to use this drug for the greatest benefit of people who need it.
Piro Lito physician-scientist

A little more than half of the people in the trial (73 patients) had some side effects, but only 15 of them had significant side effects. All but one patient were able to safely continue the drug when the side effects resolved, and no one died from side effects. “Because the drug is selective for this specific KRAS mutation, it was well tolerated by patients,” Dr. Lito says. “It only binds to and inhibits the mutated form of the protein in cancer cells. This is important because it enables high doses of the drug to be safely administered.”

Next Steps for Research

Responses for other types of cancer — including colorectal cancer, as well as pancreatic, endometrial (uterine), and appendiceal cancers and melanoma — were not as good as they were for lung cancer. But some patients with those other cancers did benefit with substantial tumor shrinkage. The investigators plan to study why sotorasib appears to work better in some types of cancer than it does in others, even when the cancers have the same mutated protein. Additional trials are already underway to continue studying sotorasib, both alone and in combination with other drugs.

Research on how to block KRAS is continuing in the laboratory as well. In January 2020, Dr. Lito’s lab published a study that looked at new approaches for combining KRAS inhibitors with other drugs. “We’re taking what we’ve learned in patients back to the bench to continue developing new treatments,” Dr. Lito says. “We’re already thinking one step ahead about how to use this drug for the greatest benefit of people who need it.”

The results from this clinical trial are also being presented at the European Society for Medical Oncology 2020 Virtual Congress.

This study was funded by Amgen, the company that makes sotorasib. It was also supported in part by the National Institutes of Health (grants P30 CA006927, 1R01CA23074501, and 1R01CA23026701A1), the Pew Charitable Trusts, and the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation.

Dr. Li has served as an advisor to Amgen (uncompensated), Genentech, Boehringer Ingelheim (uncompensated), Lilly (uncompensated), Guardant Health, Hengrui Therapeutics, Mersana Therapeutics, and Thermo Fisher Scientific, and he has received research grants to his institution from Amgen, Genentech, AstraZeneca, Daiichi Sankyo, Lilly, Illumina, GRAIL, Guardant Health, Hengrui Therapeutics, MORE Health, and BioMed Valley Discoveries. He has received academic travel support from Resolution Bioscience, MORE Health, and Jiangsu Hengrui Medicine. He is an inventor on two institutional patents at MSK and has intellectual property rights as a book author at Karger Publishers. Dr. Rosen is a scientific advisory board member at BeiGene, MAPCure, AstraZeneca, Tarveda, Ribon, Chugai, and Zai Labs, and is a consultant at Boehringer Ingelheim. He has received commercial research grants from Chugai and Boehringer Ingelheim, and has ownership interest including patents in Kura, BeiGene, Zai Labs, Fortress, and Ribon. Dr. Lito is an inventor on two patents filed by MSK and has received research grants to his institution from Amgen, Mirati Therapeutics, and Revolution Medicines. He has not received honoraria, consultation fees, stock options, or travel reimbursement from any company.