MATK is differentially expressed in the tumors of breast cancer patients treated with trastuzumab.
Trastuzumab (Herceptin) is a monoclonal antibody targeting the extracellular domain of the human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2) (1) utilized for the treatment of adjuvant and metastatic breast cancer (2) in the United States and worldwide. We mined published microarray and gene expression data (3, 4) to discover in an unbiased manner the most striking transcriptional features of trastuzumab treatment. We identified the megakaryocyte-associated tyrosine kinase MATK (5, 6) as among the genes most differentially expressed in the primary tumors of patients with breast cancer treated with trastuzumab. The primary tumors of breast cancer patients treated with trastuzumab expressed higher levels of MATK messenger RNA than did patients not treated with trastuzumab, and a single administration of trastuzumab was sufficient to result in differential expression of MATK in primary tumors of the breast, demonstrating that a platelet-expressed tyrosine kinase (5, 6) that interacts with the receptor for the stem cell factor (7) is likely transcriptionally induced in primary tumors of the breast by trastuzumab.