A drug from Amgen designed to block the cancer protein known as KRAS shrank tumors in 37% of patients with advanced lung cancer and delayed tumor progression by just under seven months, according to results from a clinical trial announced Thursday.
The Amgen drug, a pill called sotorasib, is the most important medicine in Amgen’s cancer research pipeline. It’s being tracked closely by researchers and investors because of its potential to attack certain cancer cells with a genetic mutation that was previously thought to be unreachable.
“This is a milestone in oncology because KRAS is the most frequent genetic driver of human cancer. Despite 40 years of hard research we have not been able to crack it until now,” said Bob Li, an oncologist and lung cancer expert at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and the Amgen study’s principal investigator.
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