A drug in early clinical development that targets an “undruggable” mutation in cancers has potential to join the growing class of therapies that treat cancers as genomic rather than tissue-specific diseases, a clinical trial investigator said.

Thousand Oaks, California-based Amgen plans to present Phase I data on the drug, AMG 510, at the American Society of Clinical Oncology meeting in Chicago next month. The drug targets KRAS G12C mutations, which are expressed in a variety of solid tumors – especially non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and colorectal cancer – but have previously evaded drug therapies because their structure makes them difficult to inhibit. The oral presentation will include updates on data included in an abstract made public Wednesday that showed the drug, as a single agent, produced partial remissions in two NSCLC patients and stabilized the disease of six patients, including two with NSCLC and four with colorectal cancer.

“Any time you see responses with a targeted monotherapy drug, that is big,” said trial investigator Dr. Marwan Fakih, an oncologist at City of Hope in Duarte, California, said in a phone interview.

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