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Review
. 2019 Mar 19:10:216.
doi: 10.3389/fphys.2019.00216. eCollection 2019.

Discovery Stories of RET Fusions in Lung Cancer: A Mini-Review

Kengo Takeuchi  1   2
Affiliations
Review

Discovery Stories of RET Fusions in Lung Cancer: A Mini-Review

Kengo Takeuchi. Front Physiol. .

Abstract

In 2004, a chemical inhibitor of the kinase activity of EGFR was reported to be effective in a subset of lung cancer patients with activating somatic mutations of EGFR. It remained unclear, however, whether kinase fusion genes also play a major role in the pathogenesis of lung cancers. The discovery of the EML4-ALK fusion kinase in 2007 was a breakthrough for this situation, and kinase fusion genes now form a group of relevant targetable oncogenes in lung cancer. In this mini-review article, the discovery of REarrangement during Transfection fusions, the third kinase fusion gene in lung cancer, is briefly described.

Keywords: ALK; FISH; RET; fusion gene; lung cancer.

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