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Comment
. 2015 Feb 19;125(8):1199-200.
doi: 10.1182/blood-2014-12-616318.

Removing a hair of doubt about BRAF targeting

Affiliations
Comment

Removing a hair of doubt about BRAF targeting

Robert J Kreitman. Blood. .

Abstract

In this issue of Blood, Pettirossi et al, including Drs Tiacci and Falini, who led the effort in 2011 defining the BRAF-V600E driving mutation in hairy cell leukemia (HCL),provide extensive laboratory studies showing that inhibitors of BRAF-V600E and/or mitogen-activated protein kinase kinase (MEK) reach their targets and cause HCL cell death

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Conflict of interest statement

Conflict-of-interest disclosure: The author is a coinventor on the National Institutes of Health (NIH) patent for moxetumomab pasudotox, and has a clinical Cooperative Research and Development Agreement through NIH with GlaxoSmithKline connected with dabrafenib and trametinib.

Figures

None
Studies performed by Pettirossi et al to confirm the mechanism of BRAF inhibition in HCL. (Left) Before and (right) after BRAF inhibition with vemurafenib. From top to bottom: (A) phosphorylated ERK and MEK; (B) HCL-related genes with large differences in expression before and after vemurafenib (each column, 1 of 6 patients); (C) bone marrow immunohistochemistry for cyclin D1 and CD20; (D) flow cytometry of the bone marrow aspirate; and (E) confocal microscopy of HCL cells showing loss of hairy morphology. See Figures 1A, 2B, 3A,C, and 4C-D in the article by Pettirossi et al that begins on page 1207.

Comment on

References

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