MRTX - Mirati Therapeutics Inc.: Cracking KRAS Is Harder Than It Looks

We are short shares of Mirati Therapeutics, a $4.6bn clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company whose lead drug candidate, MRTX-849, is a small-molecule KRAS inhibitor (KRASi). The KRAS protein plays a critical role in cell proliferation and differentiation, and mutations of the gene that encode it are present in one of seven tumors, and in over 30 percent of lung adenocarcinomas. Cracking KRAS has long been one of the holy grails of cancer research, and in the last year, both Amgen and Mirati have suggested they’re close.

Both companies have released Phase I data showing that their respective

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