Mirati Therapeutics, Inc. announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted Breakthrough Therapy Designation to adagrasib for the potential treatment of patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) who harbor the KRASG12C mutation following prior systemic therapy. Breakthrough Therapy Designation is an FDA program designed to expedite the development and regulatory review of drugs that have demonstrated preliminary clinical evidence of a substantial improvement over available therapy in the treatment of patients with serious diseases on at least one clinically significant endpoint. The designation for adagrasib is supported by preliminary results from the registrational Phase 1/2 KRYSTAL-01 trial in patients with advanced NSCLC, whose cancer had progressed following prior treatment with immunotherapy and/or chemotherapy. Lung cancer is one of the most common cancers worldwide, accounting for 2.21 million new cases and 1.8 million deaths worldwide in 2020. Lung cancer consists of non small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) in approximately 85% of cases and small cell lung cancer (SCLC) in approximately 15% of cases. KRASG12C is the most common KRAS mutation in NSCLC, present in approximately 14% of patients with lung adenocarcinoma, and is a biomarker mutation of poor prognosis. Adagrasib is an investigational, highly selective, and potent oral small-molecule inhibitor of KRASG12C that is optimized to sustain target inhibition, an attribute that could be important to treat KRASG12C mutated cancers, as the KRASG12C protein regenerates every 24-48 hours. Studies of adagrasib have shown that the drug has a long half-life, extensive tissue distribution and is well tolerated. Adagrasib has also shown single-agent responses in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), colorectal cancer, pancreatic cancer, and other solid tumors with KRASG12C mutations. Adagrasib is a being evaluated in several clinical trials in combination with other anti-cancer therapies with strong scientific rationale in patients with advanced solid tumors.