TRK fusion proteins are often oncogenic drivers in a wide variety of tumor types in both adult and pediatric patients^1,2

Research has identified NTRK gene fusions in more than 2 dozen types of common and rare solid tumors^1,3-5
The presence of TRK proteins has been associated with more aggressive cancer in some tumor types^5-7
Traditional approaches to the treatment of solid tumors are not designed to directly impact NTRK gene fusions or TRK proteins⁸

Even though it’s not a common alteration, learning that an NTRK gene fusion is the driver of a patient’s cancer would be a meaningful discovery.

—Federico Cappuzzo, MD

See statistics that show the importance of genomic profiling

References: 1. Amatu A, Sartore-Bianchi A, Siena S. ESMO Open. 2016;1(2):e000023. 2. Stransky N, Cerami E, Schalm S, Kim JL, Lengauer C. The landscape of kinase fusions in cancer. Nat Commun. 2014;5:4846. doi:10.1038/ncomms5846. 3. Vaishnavi A, Le AT, Doebele RC. Cancer Discov. 2015;5(1):25-34. 4. Okimoto RA, Bivona TG. Tracking down response and resistance to TRK inhibitors. Cancer Discov. 2016;6(1):14-16. 5. Lange AM, Lo H-W. Inhibiting TRK proteins in clinical cancer therapy. Cancers. 2018;10(4):E105. doi:10.3390/cancers10040105. 6. Musholt TJ, Musholt PB, Khaladj N, Schulz D, Scheumann GFW, Klempnauer J. Prognostic significance of RET and NTRK1 rearrangements in sporadic papillary thyroid carcinoma. Surgery. 2000;128(6):984-993. 7. Okamura K, Harada T, Wang S, et al. Expression of TrkB and BDNF is associated with poor prognosis in non-small cell lung cancer. Lung Cancer. 2012;78(1):100-106. 8. Padma VV. An overview of targeted cancer therapy. BioMedicine. 2015;5(4):1-6. doi:10.7603/s40681-015-0019-4. 9. Knezevich SR, McFadden DE, Tao W, Lim JF, Sorensen PHB. A novel ETV6-NTRK3 gene fusion in congenital fibrosarcoma. Nat Genet. 1998;18(2):184-187. 10. Church AJ, Calicchio ML, Nardi V, et al. Recurrent EML4–NTRK3 fusions in infantile fibrosarcoma and congenital mesoblastic nephroma suggest a revised testing strategy. Mod Pathol. 2018;31(3):463-473. 11. Orbach D, Brennan B, De Paoli A, et al. Conservative strategy in infantile fibrosarcoma is possible: the European paediatric Soft tissue sarcoma Study Group experience. Eur J Cancer. 2016;57:1-9. 12. Prasad ML, Vyas M, Horne MJ, et al. NTRK fusion oncogenes in pediatric papillary thyroid carcinoma in northeast United States. Eur J Cancer. 2016;122(7):1097-1107. 13. Wu G, Diaz AK, Paugh BS, et al. The genomic landscape of diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma and pediatric non-brainstem high-grade glioma. Nat Genet. 2014;46(5):444-450. 14. Gatalica Z, Xiu J, Swensen J, Vranic S. Molecular characterization of cancers with NTRK gene fusions. Mod Pathol. 2019;32(1):147-153. 15. Vaishnavi A, Capelletti M, Le AT. Oncogenic and drug sensitive NTRK1 rearrangements in lung cancer. Nat Med. 2013;19(11):1469-1472. 16. Lee SJ, Li GG, Kim ST, et al. NTRK1 rearrangement in colorectal cancer patients: evidence for actionable target using patient-derived tumor cell line. Oncotarget. 2015;6(36):39028-39035. 17. Kim J, Lee Y, Cho H-J, et al. NTRK1 fusion in glioblastoma multiforme.PLoS One. 2014;9(3):e91940. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0091940.

Share this page

TRK FUSION CANCER

TRK fusion proteins are often oncogenic drivers in a wide variety of tumor types in both adult and pediatric patients1,2

Even though it’s not a common alteration, learning that an NTRK gene fusion is the driver of a patient’s cancer would be a meaningful discovery.

—Federico Cappuzzo, MD

TRK fusion proteins are often oncogenic drivers in a wide variety of tumor types in both adult and pediatric patients^1,2