Gene family analysis reveals possible new therapeutic targets for colon cancer

In the first systematic analysis of a cancer-related gene family, US researchers have identified several novel gene mutations in colon cancer cells that could serve as therapeutic targets.

In a study reported in the May 9th issue of Science, Dr. Victor E. Velculescu, from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, and colleagues conducted a mutational analysis of the tyrosine kinase (TK) gene family in 182 colorectal cancer specimens.Although previous reports have linked mutations of certain TK genes with specific malignancies, no study has ever characterized the TK gene family with respect to a given cancer, Dr. Velculescu said in a statement.In the current study, the researcher focused on 138 members of the TK gene family. After sifting through approximately 4 megabases of sequence information, they identified 14 genes that contained mutations in their kinase domains. A total of 46 different mutations were identified.”Despite decades of research on tyrosine kinase genes, few of the genes we identified had been previously linked to human cancer,” the authors point out.”With this new work, one could imagine personalized therapeutics, based on mutations in different kinase genes and designed to match the mutated TK pathways present in each patient’s particular tumor DNA,” Dr. Velculescu noted. (Source: Science 2003;300:949: Reuters Health: May 8, 2003: Oncolink)