PURPOSE KIT (CD117) is a transmembrane tyrosine kinase representing a target for STI571 (Glivec) therapy. Some KIT-overexpressing solid tumors have responded favorably to STI571, potentially because of the presence of KIT-activating mutations. EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN To investigate the epidemiology of KIT overexpression and mutations, we investigated a series of 1654 breast cancers. All tumors we...

c-Kit, a receptor tyrosine kinase, is involved in intracellular signaling, and the mutated form of c-Kit plays a crucial role in occurrence of some cancers. The function of c-Kit has led to the concept that inhibiting c-Kit kinase activity can be a target for cancer therapy. The promising results of inhibition of c-Kit for treatment of cancers have been observed in some cancers such as gastroin...

The c-kit protein plays a major role in the regulation of germ cell development. Its expression and distribution in rodent testes have been widely reported. However, research regarding c-kit expression in domestic animals is scarce, and the expression pattern and distribution of c-kit in germ cells have not been clearly defined. In this study, a specific antigenic region for goat c-kit was desi...

1. Abstract 2. Introduction 3. SCF, Kit and the PI3 kinase pathway 3.1. Kit and Kit ligand SCF 3.2. PI3 kinase 3.3. Akt and its activation 3.4. The FOXO subclass of forkhead box transcription factors 4. Kit-PI3 kinase signaling in mammalian oocytes 4.1. Kit and SCF in the mammalian ovary 4.2. Activation of the oocyte PI3 kinase pathway in mouse and rat oocytes by SCF 5. Mutant mouse models for ...

The stem cell factor c-kit signaling pathway (SCF/c-kit) has been previously implicated in normal hematopoiesis, melanogenesis, and gametogenesis through the formation and migration of c-kit(+) cells. These biologic functions are also determinants in epithelial-mesenchymal transitions during embryonic development governed by the Snail family of transcription factors. Here we show that the activ...

With the persistent deployment of ontological specifications in practice and the increasing size of the deployed ontologies, methodologies for ontology engineering are becoming more and more important. In particular, the specification of negative constraints is often neglected by the human expert, whereas they are crucial for increasing an ontology’s deductive potential. We propose a novel, arg...

Inhibition of KIT oncoproteins by imatinib induces clinical responses in most gastrointestinal stromal tumor (GIST) patients. However, many patients develop imatinib resistance due to secondary KIT mutations. Heat shock protein 90 (HSP90) protects KIT oncoproteins from proteasome-mediated degradation, and we therefore did preclinical validations of the HSP90 inhibitor, 17-allylamino-18-demethox...