Dr. Keedy on Resistance in Patients With GIST

Vicki Keedy, MD, assistant professor of medicine, clinical director, Sarcoma Program, Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center, discusses resistance in patients with GIST.

Though a target exists in mutated KIT and PDGFR genes for GIST, resistance still occurs. Keedy says that both primary (patients who do not respond at all to imatinib) and secondary (patients respond and progress later on) resistance is seen.

There remains a need to determine molecular drivers of this resistance and how to block it. At the 2013 Chemotherapy Foundation Symposium, Keedy spoke about these mechanisms of resistance and the drugs that are available to target them. These drugs, though they may seem similar, can get at the mechanisms in a different way.