Oncogenic MET as an effective therapeutic target in non-small cell lung cancer resistant to EGFR inhibitors: The rise of the phoenix

Anecdotal reports have shown that concomitant inhibition of EGFR and MET can be clinically effective in patients with non-small cell lung cancer carrying EGFR mutations and MET amplification, but large phase III trials in genetically unselected individuals have failed to confirm the benefit of this combination therapy. A new study corroborates the evidence that lung cancer susceptibility to EGFR and MET blockade is sustained by genetically based activation of both targets and identifies a mutation in MET that confers acquired resistance to standard MET inhibitors hitting the active kinase, yet is vulnerable to other MET-directed compounds with a different binding mode.