Short-Form Ron Promotes Spontaneous Breast Cancer Metastasis through Interaction with Phosphoinositide 3-Kinase.

ABSTRACT: Receptor tyrosine kinases (RTKs) have been the subject of intense investigation due to their widespread deregulation in cancer and the prospect of developing targeted therapeutics against these proteins. The Ron RTK has been implicated in tumor aggressiveness and is a developing target for therapy, but its function in tumor progression and metastasis is not fully understood. We examined Ron activity in human breast cancers and found striking predominance of an activated Ron isoform known as short-form Ron (sfRon), whose function in breast tumors has not been explored. We found that sfRon plays a significant role in aggressiveness of breast cancer in vitro and in vivo. sfRon expression was sufficient to convert slow-growing, nonmetastatic tumors into rapidly growing tumors that spontaneousl

SUBMITTER: Liu X 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3218405 | biostudies-literature | 2011 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature