Abnormal activation of tyrosine kinases and its role in the pathogenesis of hematological malignancies - review / 中国实验血液学杂志

ABSTRACT

Protein tyrosine kinases are key participants in signal transduction pathways that regulate cellular growth, activation and differentiation. Aberrant PTK activity resulting from gene mutation (often accompanying chromosome translocation) or overexpression of these enzymes plays an etiologic role in several clonal hematopoietic malignancies. Other than the causative effect of PTK product of the bcr/abl fusion gene on chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML), more evidence suggests that mutated tyrosine kinases are pivotal in the pathogenesis of most of other chronic myeloproliferative disorders, such as chronic myelomonocytic leukemia (CMML) and hypereosinophilic syndrome (HES). And the exciting results in several dependent groups in 2005 showed that a single nucleotide JAK2 somatic mutation (JAK2V617F mutation) was found to be involved in the pathogenesis of polycythemia vera (PV), essential thrombocythemia (ET) and chronic idiopathic myelofibrosis (CIMF). In the leukogenesis of acute myeloid leukemias (AML), the losing of the control of the proliferation of hematopoietic progenitor cells was principally the results of the aberrant PTK activity, such as FLT3 and C-kit overexpression. It works together with the loss of function mutation genes in promoting progenitor cell differentiation to confer AML's phenotypes. These upregulated PTK molecules represent attractive disease-specific targets, to which a new class of therapeutic agents are being developed. This review focuses on abnormal tyrosine kinases that have been involved in the pathogenesis of hematopoietic malignancies.