Tyrosine kinases in soft tissue tumors

The development of therapeutic agents that specifically target the molecular alterations critical for tumorigenesis has a tremendous impact on the management of cancer patients. The successful treatment of advanced gastrointestinal stromal tumors (GIST) with receptor tyrosine kinase (RTK) inhibitors has raised the hope that other malignancies could also benefit from a similar treatment. Tyrosine kinase receptors are promising targets for personalized medicine and new drugs are currently in phase 2 and phase 3 clinical trials. We analyzed a large cohort of soft tissue sarcomas for different tyrosine kinase receptors and correlated the results with clinicopathological parameters. A total of 275 soft tissue sarcomas from the Ludwig-Maximilians University (LMU) were re-visited and catagorized according to the current World Health Organization (WHO) classification system. Different entities showed distinct survival curves in 10-year long-term survival. Furthermore, different subtypes of sarcomas showed distinct expression profiles at the protein level. The expression of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) receptors is associated with tumor progression. Due to the fact that not all patients respond to RTK inhibitor therapy, protein signatures should be evaluated before targeting therapy to give a rationale for a viable personalized therapy.