ASCO 2009 focuses on personalized therapy including wild-type KRAS testing

This year's American Society of Clinical Oncology meeting was themed around "personalized therapy," encouraging the search for predictive  biomarkers that would allow treatments to be deployed where they are  most likely to benefit patients.

Last year's discoveries about the significance of the KRAS status of  colorectal tumors indicating a response to drugs targeting the EGFR,  such as cetuximab and panitumumab, and to EGFR mutations affecting  response to small-molecule tyrosine kinase inhibitors in lung cancer,  have been followed by a flurry of small studies investigating biomarkers  and gene profiles in other cancers that might predict similar advantages  for different agents. KRAS status has not been shown to affect response  to EGFR therapies in other sites.