Title: RET Mutations in Neuroendocrine Tumors: Including Small-Cell Lung Cancer
Abstract: The RET oncogene is becoming a target of increasingly broad interest in thoracic malignancies, from papillary thyroid carcinomas to medullar thyroid cancers, to lung adenocarcinomas, and now to small-cell lung cancers. In this issue of the Journal of Thoracic Oncology, Dabir et al. identify an activating somatic mutation in the RET oncogene in a small-cell lung cancer, and demonstrate that overexpression of either wild-type or mutant RET in small-cell lung cancer cell lines increases cell proliferation, activates mitogenic pathways, and confers increased reactivity to RET tyrosine kinase inhibitors.