Dr Christopher Arendt on Indication of TKIs in Solid Tumor and Blood Cancers

Along with blood cancers, targeted therapy via tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs) has shown significant effectiveness in the treatment of solid tumor cancers, including non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), said Christopher Arendt, PhD, head, Oncology Therapeutic Area Unit, Takeda.

Transcript

Is there anything notably different about how mobocertinib works in NSCLC compared with what we know about tyrosine kinase inhibitors in blood cancers?

Indeed, we've learned a lot about TKI responsive oncodriver mutations, and the effectiveness that these medicines can bring to patients, and the durability of responses that can be achieved from studies in blood cancers—really foundational studies, so exciting for patients. They're sort of the wonderful example of precision medicine really moving the envelope and standard of care for patients who have specific lesions that can be identified and then the therapy can be tailored.

But of note, there's actually quite a robust list of targets and therapies in the solid tumor space when it comes to TKIs, and so the tumor subtypes run the whole gamut: from breast cancers, colon, renal, lung, HCC [hepatocellular carcinoma], you name it. Some of these kinase inhibitors, in fact, are what we call multikinase inhibitors. So, a little bit kind of more permissive in their profile, and that may be important for their activity (ie, they need to sort of be able to inhibit multiple growth factor pathways, not only one), but there's also some that are much more selective. this includes the class around Elk, EGFR, and HER2, for example; [they] tend to have higher selectivity profiles and be associated with treatments around a very specific lesion and a solid tumor cancer.

So, I'd say the results are broadly convergent in terms of liquid and solid. And clearly, it's all about being able to link that genetic profile to an effective therapeutic and being able to offer that to patients as a targeted therapy that can address really the disease pathogenesis and the root cause of that tumor growth.