Therapeutic Implications of Epidermal Growth Factor Receptor (EGFR) in the Treatment of Metastatic Gastric/GEJ Cancer

Jacob J Adashek; Yadis Arroyo-Martinez; Arjun K Menta; Razelle Kurzrock; Shumei Kato

doi:10.3389/fonc.2020.01312

Therapeutic Implications of Epidermal Growth Factor Receptor (EGFR) in the Treatment of Metastatic Gastric/GEJ Cancer

Front Oncol. 2020 Aug 4:10:1312. doi: 10.3389/fonc.2020.01312. eCollection 2020.

Authors

Jacob J Adashek¹, Yadis Arroyo-Martinez¹, Arjun K Menta², Razelle Kurzrock³, Shumei Kato³

Affiliations

¹ Department of Internal Medicine, H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center and Research Institute, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL, United States.
² The University of Texas, Austin, TX, United States.
³ Division of Hematology and Oncology, Center for Personalized Cancer Therapy, Department of Medicine, Moores Cancer Center, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA, United States.

Abstract

Gastric cancer remains third leading cause of global cancer mortality and is the fifth most common type of cancer in the United States. A select number of gastric cancers harbor alterations in EGFR and/or have amplification/overexpression in the HER2; 2-35 and 9-38%, respectively. The advent of next-generation sequencing of tissue and circulating tumor DNA has allowed for the massive expansion of targeted therapeutics to be employed in many settings. There have been a handful of trials using EGFR inhibitors with modest outcomes. Using novel strategies to target multiple co-mutations as well as identifying immunoregulatory molecule expression patterns will potentially drive future trials and improve gastric cancer patient outcomes.

Keywords: EGFR; ctDNA; gastric carcinoma; next-generation sequencing; targeted therapy.

Publication types

Review