A new study from Moffitt Cancer Center could help doctors predict how well patients with a specific type of lung cancer will respond to new therapies.
The research, published in Clinical Cancer Research, found that measuring the interaction between two proteins, RAS and RAF, could provide valuable insights into the effectiveness of treatments for patients with KRASG12C-mutant non-small cell lung cancer, a type of lung cancer known for being particularly difficult to treat.
The findings revealed that tumors with higher levels of RAS–RAF protein interaction were more likely to respond to KRASG12C inhibitors, a class of drugs designed to target the KRASG12C mutation. This discovery could help doctors identify which patients are most likely to benefit from this treatment.
The researchers developed a special test, called a proximity ligation assay, to measure how often RAS and RAF interact inside cancer cells. Their results showed that tumors with stronger RAS–RAF interactions also had higher levels of active RAS signaling, which is linked to better responses to KRASG12C inhibitors.
The study also compared this method with other common markers of cancer activity, like EGFR, and found that EGFR activity did not predict response to the KRASG12C inhibitors. This suggests that RAS–RAF interaction is a more accurate biomarker for treatment response.
