Pathology

Biography

Biography: Joachim Moecks

Abstract

MET is a promising drug-target in lung cancer therapy and the development of several MET inhibitors is presently under way. The study reported the interesting result that the prevalence of MET amplifications is similar in squamous and adenocarcinomas without or with EGFR or KRAS mutations which suggests that MET amplification in therapy-naive NSCLC occurs independent of the other classifications (histology, mutation). The study found for EGFR in NSCLC by advanced bio-mathematical methods aside of amplifications also other patterns of aberrance with predictive power for treatment with erlotinib. This suggests investigating with these refined methods also the patterns of MET aberrance in NSCLC, since so far only amplifications were considered for selecting of MET inhibitor therapy. A pilot investigation in MET stomach cancer for n=88 cases found aside of amplification, two other prevalent patterns of aberrance-the impact and meaning of which is unknown. Approximately n=200 cases of MET in NSCLC will be collected from clinical routine FISH assessments. Multivariate approaches as described in will be used to describe the prevalent patterns of MET aberrance in these patients and investigate their relationship to other demographic, histologic and clinical properties.