ALK-associated tumors
The anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK) gene has recently been implicated in subsets of pulmonary, esophageal, breast, and colon cancers.
These findings strengthen the importance of molecular classification of carcinomas across different organ sites, especially considering the evolving targeted anticancer therapies with ALK inhibitors.
Tumors
ALK-associated colonic adenocarcinoma
ALK-associated esophageal carcinoma
ALK-associated mammary adenocarcinoma
ALK-associated pulmonary carcinoma
ALK-associated renal cell carcinoma
ALK-associated anaplastic lymphoma
ALK-associated inflammatory myofibroblastic tumor
References
Comprehensive Histologic Analysis of ALK-Rearranged Lung Carcinomas. Yoshida A, Tsuta K, Nakamura H, Kohno T, Takahashi F, Asamura H, Sekine I, Fukayama M, Shibata T, Furuta K, Tsuda H. Am J Surg Pathol. 2011 Aug;35(8):1226-34. PMID: #21753699#
Exon array profiling detects EML4-ALK fusion in breast, colorectal, and non-small cell lung cancers. Lin E, Li L, Guan Y, Soriano R, Rivers CS, Mohan S, Pandita A, Tang J, Modrusan Z. Mol Cancer Res. 2009 Sep;7(9):1466-76. PMID: #19737969# [Free]
EML4-ALK lung cancers are characterized by rare other mutations, a TTF-1 cell lineage, an acinar histology, and young onset. Inamura K, Takeuchi K, Togashi Y, Hatano S, Ninomiya H, Motoi N, Mun MY, Sakao Y, Okumura S, Nakagawa K, Soda M, Choi YL, Mano H, Ishikawa Y. Mod Pathol. 2009 Apr;22(4):508-15. PMID: 19234440 [Free]
ALK rearrangement in sickle cell trait-associated renal medullary carcinoma. Mariño-Enríquez A, Ou WB, Weldon CB, Fletcher JA, Pérez-Atayde AR. Genes Chromosomes Cancer. 2011 Mar;50(3):146-53. PMID: 21213368
Renal cell carcinoma with novel VCL-ALK fusion: new representative of ALK-associated tumor spectrum. Debelenko LV, Raimondi SC, Daw N, Shivakumar BR, Huang D, Nelson M, Bridge JA. Mod Pathol. 2011 Mar;24(3):430-42. PMID: 21076462