BioCentury
ARTICLE | Cover Story

Driving cancer through ErbB3

June 6, 2013 7:00 AM UTC

Roche's Genentech Inc. unit has shown that mutations in ERBB3 can drive oncogenesis by enhancing the receptor's ability to form a heterodimer with HER2.1 Because the process appears to depend on HER2, the results suggest existing HER2-targeted therapies could also be effective in cancers driven by mutations in ERBB3.

Epidermal growth factor receptor 3 (EGFR3; HER3; ErbB3) is a member of the ErbB family of receptor tyrosine kinases. The membrane-bound receptor is comprised of an extracellular domain (where ligand binding and dimerization interactions occur), an a-helical transmembrane segment and an intracellular tyrosine kinase domain to phosphorylate downstream targets...