Summary

Rechallenge of imatinib significantly improves progression-free survival and disease control rate in patients with advanced gastrointestinal stromal tumor (GIST) after the failure of at least imatinib and sunitinib, likely by continuous kinase inhibition of the bulk of disease clones which retain imatinib sensitivity. Tyrosine-kinase inhibitor (TKI)-resistant clones continue to progress, however, resulting in a relatively brief duration of benefit. This article presents data from the Rechallenge of Imatinib in GIST Having No Effective Treatment study [RIGHT; NCT01151852; Kang YK et al. J Clin Oncol 2013 (suppl; abstr LBA10502)], which evaluated the efficacy of imatinib rechallenge in patients with advanced GIST following failure of all TKIs.