Merck's early KRAS data suggest combination-friendly safety

A flurry of companies are mining the KRAS G12C pathway to try and find the best tunnel to success in a type of cancer that was once thought undruggable. But challenges abound—liver toxicity, dosing limitations and relapse.

A program from Merck & Co., known as MSD here, is early days, but initial pharmacokinetic data from the KRAS G12C inhibitor MK-1084 presented at the European Society for Medical Oncology suggest the company may be able to find a way around some of the hard places that have troubled earlier entrants to the space.