Share
Patients with lung cancer (shown here) developed a wide array of resistance mechanisms to a KRAS inhibitor drug.
SPL/Science Source
Tumors find many ways to evade groundbreaking cancer drug
Jun. 23, 2021 , 5:45 PM
Researchers were ecstatic 2 years ago when, after decades of effort, they devised drugs that could block a tumor-promoting protein in cancer patients called KRAS, which previously seemed impervious to treatment. But many of these KRAS inhibitors—the first of which was approved by U.S. regulators in May—quickly lost their luster, like other targeted cancer drugs: Most patients’ tumors resumed growing after a few months, as their cancer cells became resistant to the inhibitors. Now, a study finds that the roots of this resistance are surprisingly complex, with tumors using an array of escape routes to evade the attack on KRAS.