Crizotinib in advanced non-small-cell lung cancer with concomitant ALK rearrangement and c-Met overexpression.

OBJECTIVE: Crizotinib can target against mesenchymal-epithelial transition (MET) and anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK), which has been considered as a multi-targeted tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI). The objective of this study was to explore the efficacy of crizotinib in advanced non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) with concomitant ALK rearrangement and c-Met overexpression.

METHODS: Totally, 4622 advanced NSCLC patients from two institutes (3762 patients at the Guangdong Lung Cancer Institute from January 2011 to December 2016 and 860 cases at the Perking Cancer Hospital from January 2015 to December 2016) were screened for ALK rearrangement with any method of IHC, RACE-coupled PCR or FISH. C-Met expression was performed by IHC in ALK-rearranged patients, and more than 50% of cells with high staining were defined as c-Met overexpression. The efficacy of crizotinib was explored in the ALK-rearranged patients with or without c-Met overexpression.

RESULTS: Sixteen patients were identified with c-Met overexpression in 160 ALK-rearranged cases, with the incidence of 10.0% (16/160). A total of 116 ALK-rearranged patients received the treatment of crizotinib. Objective response rate (ORR) was 86.7% (13/15) in ALK-rearranged patients with c-Met overexpression and 59.4% (60/101)in those without c-Met overexpression, P = 0.041. Median PFS showed a trend of superiority in c-Met overexpression group (15.2 versus 11.0 months, P = 0.263). Median overall survival (OS) showed a significant difference for ALK-rearranged patients with c-Met overexpression group of 33.5 months with the hazard ratio (HR) of 3.2.

CONCLUSIONS: C-Met overexpression co-exists with ALK rearrangement in a small population of advanced NSCLC. There may be a trend of favorable efficacy of crizotinib in such co-altered patients.