Tepotinib

Mesenchymal-epithelial transition factor (MET) is a receptor tyrosine kinase found overexpressed and/or mutated in a variety of tumor types, thus making it a desirable target in their treatment. MET plays a critical role in the proliferation, survival, invasion, and mobilization of tumor cells, and aberrant MET activation is thought to contribute to the development of more aggressive cancers with poorer prognoses.

Tepotinib is a kinase inhibitor directed against MET, including variants with exon 14 skipping - it inhibits MET phosphorylation and subsequent downstream signaling pathways in order to inhibit tumor cell proliferation, anchorage-independent growth, and migration of MET-dependent tumor cells. Tepotinib has also been observed to down-regulate the expression of epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) promoting genes (e.g. MMP7, COX-2, WNT1, MUC5B, and c-MYC) and upregulate the expression of EMT-suppressing genes (e.g. MUC5AC, MUC6, GSK3β, and E-cadherin) in c-MET-amplified gastric cancer cells, suggesting that the tumor-suppressing activity of tepotinib is driven, at least in part, by the negative regulation of c-MET-induced EMT. It has also been shown to inhibit melatonin 1B and nischarin at clinically relevant concentrations, though the relevance of this activity in regards to tepotinib's mechanism of action is unclear.