Am­gen isn’t wow­ing ES­MO with the lat­est KRAS G12C up­date — but maybe there are more im­por­tant is­sues at stake

BARCELONA — Am­gen isn’t go­ing to blow any­body away with its lat­est cut of the Phase I da­ta on its close­ly fol­lowed KRAS G12C pro­gram. But with the whole bio­phar­ma world watch­ing every cut of the da­ta, down to the last par­tial re­sponse, they make the ar­gu­ment that every step in the jour­ney has some im­por­tant lessons to of­fer in open­ing the door to a brand new field.

In an up­date Sat­ur­day morn­ing at the big an­nu­al ES­MO meet­ing in Barcelona, the phar­ma gi­ant says that re­searchers record­ed a sin­gle par­tial re­sponse among the 12 col­orec­tal can­cer pa­tients with the KRAS G12C mu­ta­tion who had been giv­en AMG 510. In ad­di­tion, one of 2 cas­es of treat­ment-re­sis­tant cas­es of ap­pen­diceal can­cer al­so demon­strat­ed a re­sponse.

That may well fur­ther tamp down on the ef­fer­ves­cent mar­ket re­sponse that greet­ed Am­gen’s first snap­shot of promis­ing da­ta on non-small cell lung can­cer, where 3 of 3 pa­tients in the high dose demon­strat­ed a re­sponse — cut down to 54%, or 7 of 13, in the most re­cent up­date avail­able.

“Ob­vi­ous­ly lung can­cer seems to be the strongest sig­nal,” says Greg Friberg, the head of Am­gen’s on­col­o­gy de­vel­op­ment group and an avowed en­thu­si­ast here.

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