Research Unveils the 'Who' and 'Why' of Gefitinib

Extract

When the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the lung cancer drug gefitinib (Iressa) in May 2003, it was with the knowledge that the drug would be effective in only about 10% of patients. But researchers understood little about the characteristics of this subgroup that made them respond so well.

Sixteen months later, rapid research is providing answers to the “ who” and the “why” of gefitinib.

“It's sort of a dream come true for [lung] cancer therapy,” said Mark Kris, M.D., an oncologist at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, who studies gefitinib. “It's all about finding the specific defect that causes the cancer or makes it persist, and then countering it.”

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Late last year, separate groups at Massachusetts General Hospital and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, both in Boston, discovered why only a small fraction of patients benefit from gefitinib. After scrutinizing the protein known to be the general target of the drug, epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR), both teams found that certain acquired mutations neatly tracked drug response.