Tumor Agnostic Drugs are Not Tumor Agnostic: An Analysis of Response Rate by Tumor Type
Tumor Agnostic Drugs are Not Tumor Agnostic: An Analysis of Response Rate by Tumor Type
Our new paper in the European Journal of Cancer
Recently, Alyson Haslam and I analyzed all the FDA’s tissue agnostic cancer drug approvals. These are approved for anyone with these mutations/alterations with any histology of cancer. This was our key figure. Let me walk you through it.
Each square is a drug approval— each approval is for anyone with that alteration irrespective of tissue type. Each dot is the response rate for a specific tissue type in that study and the red line is the average response rate across tumor types— aka what the FDA allows the package insert to say.
Check it out. For every mutation response rates vary between 0 and 100%. Sure, these are often small numbers but even in the center of the plot, response rate is all over the place. Across all tissue agnostic approvals, there is more variation between tissues inside of individual approvals, than across tissue agnostic approvals!
Here is our conclusion:
That research is not being done. Worse the available standards vary widely by tissue type so in some settings these approvals may extend life, but in other setting they may shorten life over alternatives, and we have no idea which is which. Tissue agnostic approvals do not appear agnostic.
Full paper here. Consider subscribing to support this project.
