July 1 Clinical Cancer Research Highlights

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Selected Articles from the July 1, 2008 Issue

The articles referenced in this Highlights section will be available online in HTML and PDF formats to all interested users at no charge until the next issue of Clinical Cancer Research is published. Click on the article title to view the complete article.

View the Table of Contents for the July 1 issue of Clinical Cancer Research.

Invasive Breast Carcinomas with Wnt Pathway Mutations

The Wnt pathway is central to mammary gland development, and its deregulation plays a role in breast cancer. Although mutations of Wnt pathway components are found commonly in malignancies, they are rare in breast cancer. By performing immunohistochemical staining along with a comprehensive mutational analysis, Hayes and colleagues found that mutations in several Wnt pathway genes (CTNNB1, APC, and WISP3) are present in over 40% of cases of metaplastic carcinoma, a type of invasive breast carcinoma. These results not only increase our understanding of the molecular etiology of these tumors, but may pave the way for targeted treatments.

Screening and Breast Cancer Subtype Distributions

Predicting Chemoradiotherapy Response in Esophageal Cancer

The EML4-ALK fusion gene has recently been identified as a new oncogene in about 7% of Japanese non-small cell lung cancers (NSCLC), but its association with ethnic and patient characteristics is unknown. In this study, Koivunen and colleagues identified EML4-ALK in about 3% of NSCLC tumors from patients of different ethnic backgrounds. EML4-ALK is related to adenocarcinoma histology, limited smoking history of a patient, and Asian ethnicity. Furthermore, they identified three NSCLC cell lines carrying the EML4-ALK fusion. One of these lines was sensitive to the ALK specific inhibitor TAE684, and another was sensitive to TAE684 in combination with an EGFR/HER2 inhibitor. These results suggest that EML4-ALK is a potential target for drug therapies in NSCLC.