By DoM Communications | Date published: February 12, 2026
Robert Yuan and Mentor Shyam Patel Explore the Role of NRAS and KRAS Mutations in Acute Myeloid Leukemia in Recent Study
In a recent study published in the Annals of Hematology, Robert Yuan, MD, PGY2, and mentor Shyam Patel, MD, PhD, associate professor of medicine in the Division of Hematology/Oncology, explored the role of NRAS and KRAS mutations in acute myeloid leukemia.
Here, Drs. Yuan and Patel aimed to understand avenues for new therapies for this subset of AML. Mutations in NRAS and KRAS are recurrent in a variety of solid tumors, with some FDA-approved medications available on the market, but according to Drs. Yuan and Patel, there are no FDA-approved RAS inhibitors in AML.
“The prognostic significance of RAS mutations in AML has been a matter of debate: we do not know if these are low-risk or high-risk mutations. To help address this knowledge gap, our UMass team studied this subset of patients,” explained Dr. Patel. “Median overall survival (OS) for RAS-mutant AML was shorter compared to RAS-wild-type AML. For patients receiving cytarabine-based as the first-line chemotherapy, patients with RAS mutations had shorter median OS compared to RAS-wild-type AML. Hematopoietic cell transplantation (HCT) for RAS-mutant AML improved the median OS compared to no HCT.”
The team additionally noted that most RAS mutations in AML were subclonal. Codon analysis showed that most RAS substitutions were G12D or G13D, which are not targetable by commercially available RAS G12C inhibitors on the market, suggesting that the field might benefit from developing new RAS inhibitors for treatment of AML.