War Lung Cancer

Lung cancer was the highest diagnosed cancer and leading cause of cancer related deaths in 2020.

Different types of chemotherapy have been approved to treat Lung cancer - beginning with Cisplatin, continuously evolving targeted therapies such as Gefitinib, Bevacizumab, Crizotinib, Dabrafenib, Pembrozulimab, Larotrectinib, Nivolumab, Selpercatinib, Capmatinib, Amivantanab-vmjb, with the latest being Sotorasib.

While significant progress has been made with the introduction of these therapies, the overall increase in five year survival has increased to only 21.7% from 12.3 % over the last fifty years.

A targeted therapy is developed to inhibit an abnormally expressed protein or enzyme that causes cancer. This abnormally expressed protein is encoded by a gene that undergone a mutation. A targeted therapy is given to a cancer patient based on the presence of the specific mutation (also known as targetable mutation). Yet, not all patients having the targetable mutation respond in the same way to the targeted therapy. Highly variable clinical responses (Overall survival and progression free survival) have been observed for many targeted therapies.

It is now becoming increasingly clear, based on a large body of scientific evidence, that the presence of the targetable mutation alone is not predictive of clinical efficacy for a targeted therapy. Additional mutations, by-pass mechanisms, high variability in pharmacokinetics and pre-therapy presence of resistant mutations can all significantly affect the efficacy of the targeted therapy.

Knowledge of all the mutations and alterations associated with the targetable mutation can help in identifying the patients who will respond and not respond to the targeted therapy. This will help in avoiding wrong treatment, decrease risk of resistance development and unwanted toxicities, while providing significant therapeutic benefit to the patient.

OncoDynamix is fighting the war on lung cancer with its novel technology platforms such as NeoTox and OncembleX. These technologies analyse molecular data associated with the targetable mutation from lung cancer patients to identify targeted therapies for specific patients with a specific lung cancer.

Author:Ramesh Jayaraman-Chief Scientific Officer, OncoDynamiX Lifesciences.