Peer-reviewed veterinary case report
KIT gene mutations and expression in canine oral melanomas
By Smedley, Rebecca C et al.·Published in Veterinary pathology·2021·3078Michigan State University, United States·View original on PubMed →
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Original publication title: Correlation Between KIT Expression andMutations in 2 Subtypes of Canine Oral Melanocytic Neoplasms.
- Species:
- dog
Plain-English summary
A study looked at 27 dogs with oral malignant melanomas (a type of cancer) to see if a specific treatment, known as tyrosine kinase inhibitors, could help them. These tumors are often hard to treat and have a poor outlook even after surgery. The researchers found that most of the malignant tumors showed a certain protein (KIT) that could potentially be targeted by treatments, but they also discovered that the mutations present in these tumors didn't seem to connect with the KIT expression. This means that the targeted therapies might not be effective for these dogs.
People also search for: dog oral melanoma treatment · canine cancer KIT expression · tyrosine kinase inhibitors for dogs
Abstract
mutations have been reported in 15% to 40% of certain human melanoma subtypes, including those histologically similar to canine oral malignant melanomas. Therapeutic response to tyrosine kinase inhibitors has been demonstrated in those human patients. As canine oral malignant melanomas tend to have a poor prognosis despite aggressive surgical removal, evaluation of KIT expression and identification ofmutations in canine oral melanocytic neoplasms was performed to determine if there is any indication that tyrosine kinase inhibitor drugs might effectively treat any of these cases. This study evaluated 27 canine oral malignant melanomas and 12 canine histologically well-differentiated oral melanocytic neoplasms for activatingmutations, determined differences in immunohistochemical expression of KIT andmutation status, and determined if KIT expression could predictmutation status. Among samples that contained intraepithelial nests of neoplastic melanocytes in the KIT-labeled sections, KIT was expressed within cells in these nests in 22/23 (96%) malignant melanomas and 5/7 histologically well-differentiated neoplasms. KIT was expressed in 10% to 30% of neoplastic melanocytes in the lamina propria in 3/24 (13%) malignant melanomas, but 0/9 (0%) histologically well-differentiated neoplasms. Next-generation sequencing identified 85 variants in, including 9 nonsynonymous mutations that resulted in amino acid changes predicted to affect protein function.mutations with predicted deleterious protein effects were more common in malignant melanomas (8/27 [30%] vs 1/12 [8%]). There was no apparent relationship between detectedmutations and KIT expression. These results do not support the use of therapies that target.
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Search related cases →Original publication on PubMed: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33910439/