Jacobio Pharma is making a play for the Chinese KRAS market, unveiling registrational lung cancer data that suggest its asset can hold its own on efficacy and may have advantages on safety and tolerability.
Investigators at 43 sites in China enrolled 119 patients with locally advanced or metastatic KRAS G12C mutated non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Participants had received one to three prior lines of therapy, in almost all cases including platinum-based therapy and an immune checkpoint inhibitor, and then took the KRAS inhibitor glecirasib as a single agent.
Jacobio reported an overall response rate of 47.9% at the ASCO Plenary Series. Median progression-free survival and overall survival (PFS/OS) clocked in at 8.2 months and 13.6 months, respectively. The study was yet to reach the median duration of response as of the cutoff.
The efficacy results are in the range set by earlier readouts on other KRAS drugs. The response rate and survival figures are a touch higher than in studies of Amgen’s Lumakras and Bristol Myers Squibb’s Krazati. But Innovent Biologics, which is leading the KRAS G12C race in China, reported a higher response rate and PFS than its compatriot. Jacobio, which lost an AbbVie alliance for another asset, began a trial in the U.S. in 2021.
Jacobio has identified safety and tolerability as an area it may have an edge over the competition. The abstract said: “In contrast to other FDA-approved KRAS G12C inhibitor, Gleciasib has 6.7% of nausea, 7.6% vomiting, 3.4% diarrhea in which only one grade 3 nausea is reported.” Five percent of patients discontinued because of adverse events, a lower rate than in the Lumakras and Krazati trials.
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute’s Julia Rotow, M.D., discussed the data as part of the ASCO Plenary Series. According to Jacobio, the physician said: “If glecirasib can match or even bypass current efficacy data with an overall improved side effect profile, this agent would be an attractive treatment option.”
A better side effect profile could unlock combinations that are too toxic to consider when using other KRAS drugs.