Novel Therapies in HER2-Amplified Metastatic Colorectal Cancer

Jaclyn Hechtman, MD: How will the potential approval of new therapy targeting HER2 [human epidermal growth factor receptor 2] impact the treatment landscaping further?

Andrea Cercek, MD: I think approval of new therapies targeting HER2 will be important in this landscape. I think mainly we always want efficacy, but we also want to minimize toxicity. Although fam-trastuzumab deruxtecan is an active agent, as I mentioned in HER2-amplified colorectal cancer, it did have quite a bit of serious adverse events—grade 3 or worse. The most common were hematologic and gastrointestinal, but there was also, I believe, about 9% of interstitial lung disease. So, it was not without toxicity. In terms of drugs, we look for efficacy but we look at toxicity as well, and there are certain combinations that are less toxic, which I think will be important to be approved. More efficacious combinations that are durable— not just in response rate—but that offer improvement in progression-free survival and improvement in overall survival, I think, will be key.

Transcript edited for clarity.