Editor's Summary
2 August 2007
Lung cancer link to ALK
Despite the high incidence of lung cancer, many aspects of its molecular pathogenesis remain unknown. The discovery of a small inversion of chromosome 2p in a significant proportion of non-small-cell lung cancer patients is therefore of potential importance. The inversion gives rise to a fusion protein comprising portions of a protein known as EML4 and the anaplastic lymphoma kinase, ALK. The fusion kinase acts as a transforming oncogene, and is a promising target for diagnosis and therapy.
News and Views: Cancer: Broken genes in solid tumours
Mutations that cause portions of two genes to fuse together and form a hybrid gene are frequent in blood-related cancers. New findings implicate one such fusion gene in the most common type of lung cancer.
Matthew Meyerson
doi:10.1038/448545a
Article: Identification of the transforming EML4–ALK fusion gene in non-small-cell lung cancer
Manabu Soda, Young Lim Choi, Munehiro Enomoto, Shuji Takada, Yoshihiro Yamashita, Shunpei Ishikawa, Shin-ichiro Fujiwara, Hideki Watanabe, Kentaro Kurashina, Hisashi Hatanaka, Masashi Bando, Shoji Ohno, Yuichi Ishikawa, Hiroyuki Aburatani, Toshiro Niki, Yasunori Sohara, Yukihiko Sugiyama & Hiroyuki Mano
doi:10.1038/nature05945
Abstract | Full Text | PDF (1,261K) | Supplementary information
