A plain language summary of the molecular changes in the tumors of people with BRAF V600E-mutant colorectal cancer in the BEACON study

Scott Kopetz; Danielle A Murphy; Jie Pu; Fortunato Ciardiello; Jayesh Desai; Eric Van Cutsem; Harpreet Singh Wasan; Takayuki Yoshino; Hedieh Saffari; Xiaosong Zhang; Phineas Hamilton; Tao Xie; Rona Yaeger; Josep Tabernero

doi:10.1080/14796694.2025.2498880

A plain language summary of the molecular changes in the tumors of people with BRAF V600E-mutant colorectal cancer in the BEACON study

Future Oncol. 2025 Jun;21(14):1713-1723. doi: 10.1080/14796694.2025.2498880. Epub 2025 May 9.

Authors

Affiliations

¹ aUniversity of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX, USA.
² bFormerly Pfizer, La Jolla, CA, USA.
³ cFormerly Pfizer, New York, NY, USA.
⁴ dUniversity of Campania Luigi Vanvitelli, Naples, Italy.
⁵ ePeter MacCallum Cancer Centre, Melbourne, VIC, Australia.
⁶ fUniversity Hospitals Gasthuisberg Leuven and KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium.
⁷ gHammersmith Hospital, Division of Cancer, Imperial College London, London, UK.
⁸ hNational Cancer Center Hospital East, Kashiwa, Japan.
⁹ iPfizer, South San Francisco, CA, USA.
¹⁰ jPfizer, La Jolla, CA, USA.
¹¹ kMemorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY, USA.
¹² lVall d'Hebron Hospital Campus and Vall d'Hebron Institute of Oncology (VHIO), University of Vic - Central University of Catalonia, Barcelona, Spain.

No abstract available

Plain language summary

What is this summary about?This summary discusses the genetic and molecular changes in tumors of participants with BRAF V600E–mutant metastatic colorectal cancer who were treated with encorafenib plus cetuximab, with or without binimetinib, in the BEACON study.What were the results?Encorafenib plus cetuximab, with or without binimetinib, reduced the risk of participants dying compared with cetuximab plus chemotherapy, regardless of genetic or molecular colorectal cancer subtypes.The study also found genetic and molecular changes in the participants’ tumors during treatment that were associated with how long they lived.What do the results of the study mean?The types of genetic and molecular changes that occur during treatment in participants’ tumors can affect their response to treatment with BRAF and MEK inhibitors.[Box: see text].