Anaplastic Lymphoma Kinase as a Cancer Target in Pediatric Malignancies.

ABSTRACT: In this era of more rational therapies, substantial efforts are being made to identify optimal targets. The discovery of translocations involving the anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK) receptor tyrosine kinase in a subset of non-small cell lung cancers has become a paradigm for precision medicine. Notably, ALK was initially discovered as the fusion gene in anaplastic large cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma, a disease predominantly of childhood. The discovery of activating kinase domain mutations of the full-length ALK receptor as the major cause of hereditary neuroblastoma, and that somatically acquired mutations and amplification events often drive the malignant process in a subset of sporadic tumors, has established ALK as a tractable molecular target across histologically diverse tumors in which

SUBMITTER: Mosse YP 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4738092 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature