I have seen literature that aligned quite well with both ARQL and Roche's findings. Similar findings from BOTH Tivantinib AND MetMab move me to this direction. I was questioning squamous subpopulation result when Tivantinib ph2 result was initially announced.
This is important:
PS There is one piece of supporting data which cannot be entirely discounted - and that is that Roche too noted that the squamous patients did less well than the non-squamous.
Here are a couple of literature. There are many others.
Adenocarcinomas expressed cMet proteins more frequently than squamous cell carcinomas. In fact, strong cMet protein expression densitometrically evaluated as strong (+++) was seen only in adenocarcinomas. In contrast, more than half squamous cell carcinomas failed to show any cMet protein expression.
In conclusion, the results of our studies with both the cell lines and primary tumors of human NSCLCs demonstrate that adenocarcinomas tend to show high levels of expressions for TGF-a, c-erbB-2, and c-met, whereas squamous cell carcinomas tend to express only higher level of EGFR. It remains to be seen whether the differential expression of these genes is causally or consequentially related to the differentiation of these lung tumors.