Dr. Price on the Challenges of the CodeBreaK 100 Trial in GI Cancers

Timothy Price, MBBS, DHthSc, FRACP, senior consultant medical oncologist and director of Medical Oncology and Clinical Cancer Research at The Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Adelaide, discusses challenges faced during the CodeBreaK 100 trial in gastrointestinal (GI) cancers.

Patients enrolled to the ​ongoing phase 1 CodeBreaK 100 trial ​were heavily pretreated, Price says. As such, patients had to undergo careful screening to ensure that they were fit to tolerate another course of treatment. This was one of the primary challenges faced during the phase 1 portion of t​he study, Price says.

In addition, ​eligible patients had to have KRAS G12C–positive disease, says Price. KRAS is a rare mutation in the GI cancers space and only about 2% to 3% of patients with colorectal cancer (CRC) harbor KRAS alterations. In the 50% of patients with CRC that express RAS mutations, a commonly mutated gene across multiple tumor types, only about 5% to 6% will ​harbor KRAS alterations. As such, screening to identify these rare mutations has been an additional challenge ​in the CodeBreaK 100 trial, Price concludes.