CASE REPORT article
Front. Oncol.
Sec. Cancer Molecular Targets and Therapeutics
Volume 15 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fonc.2025.1555801
This article is part of the Research TopicRenewed Insight into Cancer Mechanism and TherapyView all 36 articles
A Rare Case of MET-Amplified Gastric Cancer with Systemic Metastasis: Remarkable Efficacy of Crizotinib and the Role of Precision Medicine
Provisionally accepted
- 1The First School of Clinical Medicine, Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing, China
- 2Department of Oncology, First Affiliated Hospital, Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, China
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Gastric cancer remains one of the most prevalent gastrointestinal malignancies, with certain subtypes, such as poorly cohesive carcinoma-including signet ring cell carcinoma (SRCC)-exhibiting aggressive progression and poor prognosis. Mesenchymal epithelial transition (MET) amplification, a relatively rare oncogenic driver in gastric cancer (~2-10.2% of cases), has been associated with resistance to conventional therapies and dismal survival (median <6 months in metastatic cases).While MET inhibitors such as crizotinib have shown efficacy in MET-altered non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), their role in gastric cancer remains uncertain due to tumor heterogeneity and the lack of robust clinical evidence. We report a case of a female patient with MET-amplified metastatic gastric cancer and systemic bone marrow involvement. Despite eventual disease progression, the initial response to crizotinib was remarkable, with rapid hematologic recovery (platelets: 7→216×10⁹ /L) and significant tumor regression. Although disease progression occurred after 5 months, characterized by pulmonary metastasis, biliary obstruction and multiple infections, the substantial initial benefits of crizotinib cannot be overlooked. The patient survived 8 months from diagnosis, highlighting the transient efficacy of MET inhibition and the impact of clonal evolution. This case underscores the potential and limitations of MET inhibitors in gastric cancer. Biomarker-driven selection, early resistance detection, and trials exploring crizotinib-chemotherapy/immunotherapy combinations are urgently needed to improve outcomes in this aggressive subtype.
Keywords: Targeted therapy1, MET-amplified2, Precision medicine3, Crizotinib4, gastric cancer5
Received: 05 Jan 2025; Accepted: 16 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Shen, Xu and Sun. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Jing Sun, The First School of Clinical Medicine, Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing, China
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.