RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Stayin' Alive
JF Science's STKE
JO Sci. STKE
FD American Association for the Advancement of Science
SP tw304
OP tw304
DO 10.1126/stke.2472004tw304
VO 2004
IS 247
YR 2004
UL http://stke.sciencemag.org/content/2004/247/tw304.abstract
AB About 10% of patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) experience dramatic tumor regression when treated with gefitinib (Iressa), a recently approved drug that inhibits the kinase activity of the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR). Tumors that respond to gefitinib harbor somatic mutations in the EGFR kinase domain. Sordella et al. now show that these mutant EGFRs activate a signaling pathway that keeps the tumor cells alive even when they are treated with agents that induce cell death, such as conventional chemotherapeutic drugs. The authors speculate that NSCLCs expressing the mutant EGFRs may become fully dependent on this cell survival pathway, which could explain, at least in part, their extreme sensitivity to gefitinib. R. Sordella, D. W. Bell, D. A. Haber, J. Settleman, Gefitinib-sensitizing EGFR mutations in lung cancer activate anti-apoptotic pathways. Science 305, 1163-1167 (2004). [Abstract] [Full Text]