Tepotinib Improves Prognosis in an Elderly Patient with Poor Performance Status and MET Exon 14 Skipping Mutation-positive Non-small Cell Lung Cancer.

Several target therapies for driver gene mutations related with lung cancer growth are clinically effective in patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer. Gefitinib and alectinib have been reported as being effective and safe even in those with poor performance status (PS), but little is known about efficacy and tolerability of other TKIs. An 84-year-old man was diagnosed with non-small cell lung cancer (cT3N2M1c stage IVB). During the initial treatment with carboplatin and nab-paclitaxel, his Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group PS increased to 3. He was found to be positive for the mesenchymal-epithelial transition factor (MET) exon 14 skipping mutation, and tepotinib, a c-Met inhibitor, was started. His PS improved to 0-1 and partial response was maintained for 12 months or more. The MET exon 14 skipping mutation is common in the elderly, and TKI treatment may improve prognosis, even in patients with reduced PS.

Maternal effect on body measurement and meat production traits in purebred Duroc pigs.

We investigated maternal effect on nine body measurement traits (body height, body length, front width (FW), chest width (CW), hind width (HW), chest depth, chest girth (CHG), front cannon circumference (FCC) and rear cannon circumference (RCC)) measured at the end of performance testing and five meat production traits (ages at the start and end of performance testing (D30 and D105), average daily gain (ADG), backfat thickness and loin muscle area) in purebred Duroc pigs. Genetic parameters for each trait were estimated by using six single-trait models with and without common litter environmental effect, maternal genetic effect and direct-maternal genetic correlation. The value of Akaike's information criterion was lowest with the model including direct additive genetic and common litter environmental effects for 10 traits. The estimated proportion of common litter environmental variance to phenotypic variance was approximately ≥0.1 for D30, D105, ADG, FW, CW, HW, CHG, FCC and RCC. Using a model without common litter environmental effect would overestimate the direct heritability of most traits. Standard errors of estimated genetic parameters tended to be larger in models including maternal genetic effect. The results indicate that a compromise could be made for accurate genetic parameter estimation for body measurement traits, as well as meat production traits, in pigs by considering common litter environmental effect.