Dr. Suneel Kamath, a gastrointestinal medical oncologist at Cleveland Clinic in Ohio and an assistant professor of drugs on the Cleveland Clinic Lerner School of Drugs of Case Western Reserve College, sat down for an interview with CURE following the
In the course of the interview, he mentioned the significance of biomarker-driven approaches in most cancers care, rising focused therapies and the necessity to develop molecular testing to higher personalize therapy for sufferers with superior illness.
Transcript
What ought to sufferers take away from the 2026 ASCO Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium?
Much like the section 3 HERIZON-GEA-01 trial, what’s actually the general theme of those is that we now have to determine particular biomarkers for as many individuals as we are able to, as a result of once we determine a particular biomarker driving a most cancers, we all know that the efficacy of the medicine we use to deal with that focus on can be a lot better.
Typically on the flip aspect, we are able to have a significantly better aspect impact profile in contrast with an untargeted therapy like chemotherapy and even a few of the extra aggressive immunotherapies. We typically consider these as an enormous advance, however a few of these really could be fairly poisonous as a result of they aren’t as focused in sure settings. Having a focused, biomarker-driven strategy can actually enhance each outcomes and tolerability. It’s upon us to attempt to push that envelope, determine extra biomarkers, in order that we are able to reduce down the variety of folks for whom we solely have untargeted therapies.
One other one which’s on the horizon, we’ve recognized concerning the KRAS gene for a very long time as a extremely essential driver mutation in a variety of cancers, an important being pancreatic. Over 90% of pancreatic cancers have KRAS mutations. However solely just lately have we been capable of develop medicine that may really goal that. That’s actually thrilling. It’s not a uncommon biomarker. If we had an efficient drug for this gene, that might be an efficient remedy for greater than 90% of individuals with pancreatic most cancers, and that would really be an advance. With extra time, the hope is that we begin to determine extra targets in order that we are able to personalize therapies for each particular person affected person and each particular person tumor, reasonably than counting on untargeted regimens.
This additionally emphasizes the significance of doing that testing. It’s nonetheless one thing that we lag behind in, in an enormous means, particularly on the subject of getting outcomes on each affected person with superior illness. We’ve got to do it in everybody. We might imagine we’re doing an excellent job, however as physicians, we actually must work on that. Sufferers can be sturdy advocates for this. There have definitely been conditions the place folks got here in and requested whether or not a particular check had been executed, and it turned out it hadn’t.
Initially, there was an assumption that there wasn’t sufficient tissue or that there was some cause it couldn’t be executed, and it turned out that there was. Folks asking about it has helped result in that testing being accomplished. Sufferers are inspired to be their very own advocates and assist remind clinicians to do the issues they’re presupposed to be doing, too.
Transcript has been edited for readability and conciseness.
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