Brain Enzyme Aberrantly Expressed by Renal Cancer Cells May Be Attractive Therapeutic Target

When researchers put renal cancer cells from established cell lines into an extracellular matrix that promotes tumor growth, the cells expressed high levels of RNA for a kinase normally found in neurons in the brain. When the investigators inhibited the kinase, cancer cell division and spread halted. This suggests that the kinase was not just a cancer marker, but played an important role in cancer growth. The kinase was also expressed at high levels in kidney tumors from patients. The research was presented at the American Association for Cancer Research’s Annual Meeting.