FGFR4: a promising therapeutic target for liver cancer / 药学学报

ABSTRACT

Fibroblast growth factor receptor (FGFR), as a member of the receptor tyrosine kinase family, participates in a variety of biological processes by binding to ligand fibroblast growth factors (FGFs) and activating downstream signaling pathways, such as cell proliferation, migration, anti-apoptosis, angiogenesis, etc. FGFR gene amplification, missense mutations, oncogenic fusion are related to the occurrence and development of many cancers. FGFR has become an important potential target in cancer treatment. At present most of these studies focus on FGFR1-3, however there is growing evidence implicating an important and unique role of FGFR4 in oncogenesis and resistance to anti-tumor therapy in multiple types of cancer. The abnormality of FGF19-FGFR4 signaling pathway has been proved to be a carcinogenic factor of liver cancer. Importantly, there are several novel FGFR4-specific inhibitors in clinical trials, FGFR4 is therefore a promising target for the treatment of hepatocellular carcinoma harboring aberrant FGF19-FGFR4 signaling. In this review, we focus on assessing the role of FGFR4 in liver cancer, including a summary of the structure and ligand of FGFR4, downstream signaling pathways, abnormal activation in liver cancer, and the research progress of small molecule FGFR4 inhibitors, FGFR4 monoclonal antibodies and combined immunotherapy.