Findings help unravel lung cancer drug resistance

One of the primary limitations to the effectiveness of cancer therapeutics is drug resistance. This month in the journal Cell, Broad researchers Rick Wilson, Levi Garraway, and colleagues describe their work unraveling drug resistance mechanisms for ALK tyrosine kinase inhibitors in ALK-dependent non-small cell lung cancers. They screened nearly 16,000 ORFs corresponding to over 12,000 genes, identifying a range of known mechanisms able to confer resistance to ALK inhibitors, along with new ones including purinergic P2Y receptors (G-protein coupled receptors) acting through Protein Kinase C signaling.