Team of Prof. Savvas Savvides and collaborators reveal the 3D structure of the ALK receptor, an important receptor in health and disease.

CRIG

Receptor tyrosine kinases (RTKs) are a group of receptors central to human health and disease, as functional defects in these receptors are associated with several cancers, autoimmune, neurological and metabolic disorders. Because of their importance, most RTKs have been extensively studied. For the ALK family subgroup however, structural information remained missing, while it has been shown that ALK and its mutated versions are, among others, involved in the pediatric cancer neuroblastoma, colon cancer and melanoma.

Together with their collaborators of the National Cancer Research Institute (Tokyo, Japan), the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (New York, USA), and ℏ bioconsulting (Minnesota, USA), the team of VIB-UGent and CRIG group leader Prof. Savvas Savvides and spearheaded by PhD student Steven De Munck has now discovered the 3D structure of ALK and LTK, another RTK, as well as their structures when bound to their activating proteins. This information is crucial to enable specific therapeutic targeting of these receptors. The results were published in the prestigious journal Nature.

Read more in the VIB press release.

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