title: The landscape of kinase fusions in cancer.
abstract: Human cancer genomes harbour a variety of alterations leading to the deregulation of key pathways in tumour cells. The genomic characterization of tumours has uncovered numerous genes recurrently mutated, deleted or amplified, but gene fusions have not been characterized as extensively. Here we develop heuristics for reliably detecting gene fusion events in RNA-seq data and apply them to nearly 7,000 samples from The Cancer Genome Atlas. We thereby are able to discover several novel and recurrent fusions involving kinases. These findings have immediate clinical implications and expand the therapeutic options for cancer patients, as approved or exploratory drugs exist for many of these kinases.
authors.affiliation: Blueprint Medicines, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02142, USA.
authors.forename: Nicolas
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Stransky
authors.affiliation: Blueprint Medicines, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02142, USA.
authors.forename: Ethan
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Cerami
authors.affiliation: Blueprint Medicines, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02142, USA.
authors.forename: Stefanie
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Schalm
authors.affiliation: Blueprint Medicines, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02142, USA.
authors.forename: Joseph L
authors.initials: JL
authors.lastname: Kim
authors.affiliation: Blueprint Medicines, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02142, USA.
authors.forename: Christoph
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Lengauer
mesh_terms: D020869:Gene Expression Profiling; D050939:Gene Fusion / Q000235:genetics*; D015894:Genome, Human; D006801:Humans; D058990:Molecular Targeted Therapy; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000235:genetics*; D010770:Phosphotransferases / Q000235:genetics*; D017423:Sequence Analysis, RNA
chemical_list: D010770:Phosphotransferases