A targeted therapy called capmatinib can provide significant benefits to patients who have advanced lung cancer with specific gene mutations, according to recently published results from a phase two clinical trial. The trial, which is published in the New England Journal of Medicine, was conducted by an international team led by investigators at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH).
A protein called MET affects a wide range of processes within cells, and alterations that activate the MET gene, which codes for this protein, have been implicated in many cancers. MET can be activated by a variety of mechanisms. Multiples copies of the MET gene, called MET amplification, occurs in one-to-six percent of patients with non–small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC). MET exon 14 skipping mutations, which cause deletion of a region called exon 14 in the expressed protein, occur in approximately three-to-four percent of patients with NSCLC and are associated with a poor prognosis.