Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • In Brief
  • Published:

Breast cancer

NOTCH and MAST are rearranged, but rarely

Nature Reviews Cancer volume 12, page 7 (2012)Cite this article

Subjects

Access through your institution
Buy or subscribe

Dan Robinson and colleagues used pair-end transcriptome sequencing to examine gene fusions in breast cancer cell lines and tumours. Among the expressed gene fusions they found five microtubule-associated serine-threonine (MAST) kinase fusions and eight NOTCH fusions. Expression of the MAST gene fusions in benign breast epithelial cells increased proliferation, and small interfering RNAs targeted against MAST2 in cell lines expressing a ARID1A–MAST2 fusion gene reduced growth and viability in vitro. Similar experiments overexpressing NOTCH1 and NOTCH2 fusion proteins in benign breast epithelial cells resulted in altered growth characteristics, such as anchorage independence. In addition, the inhibition of NOTCH signalling reduced the growth of NOTCH gene fusion-expressing breast cancer xenografts. These findings indicate that transcriptome analyses could identify patients with breast cancer who harbour rare gene fusions that are therapeutically relevant.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Access through your institution

Buy this article

  • Purchase on SpringerLink
  • Instant access to full article PDF
Buy now

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

ORIGINAL RESEARCH PAPER

  1. Robinson, D. R. et al. Functionally recurrent rearrangements of the MAST kinase and Notch gene families in breast cancer. Nature Med. 17, 1646–1651 (2011)

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

Download references

Authors
  1. Nicola McCarthy
    View author publications

    Search author on:PubMed Google Scholar

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

McCarthy, N. NOTCH and MAST are rearranged, but rarely. Nat Rev Cancer 12, 7 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrc3199

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nrc3199

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing