Oncogene database

55359

STYK1

serine/threonine/tyrosine kinase 1;STYK1;serine/threonine/tyrosine kinase 1

novel oncogene with kinase domain|protein PK-unique|tyrosine-protein kinase STYK1

12p13.2

protein-coding

There have been no target molecules that have enabled us to diagnose lung cancer with high sensitivity and specificity even in its early clinical stages. A molecule termed novel oncogene with kinase-domain (NOK) was recently reported as a receptor protein tyrosine kinase that is expressed in some cancer cell lines and causes the transformation and progressive proliferation of normal cells. Therefore, NOK could be a possible candidate for a diagnostic marker for human cancers. We examined here, the degree of NOK mRNA expression in lung cancer tissues and compared it to that in non-cancerous tissues. More than 60% of non-cancerous samples (8/13) showed undetectable levels of mRNA. In contrast, NOK mRNA was detected in 97.6% (40/41) of lung cancer tissues, resulting in a sensitivity of 80.5% and a specificity of 92.3% that was estimated using the cutoff obtained from receiver operating characteristic curve analysis. Further, NOK mRNA expression was found to be elevated in 92.3% (12/13) of cancerous tissues when paired cancerous and non-cancerous tissues from identical patients were compared. There were no obvious correlations between clinicopathological factors and NOK mRNA expression; however, NOK mRNA was highly expressed even at the early clinical stages of the cancer. These results suggest that NOK mRNA might be a new tool to support the diagnosis of lung cancers, irrespective of the clinical stages.

OBJECTIVE: Alterations in gene expression levels or mutations of previously reported tyrosine kinases are detected in only limited numbers of patients with acute leukemia. In this study, we examined whether serine threonine tyrosine kinase 1 (STYK1)/novel oncogene with kinase domain (NOK) is overexpressed in patients with acute leukemia. MATERIALS AND METHODS: In peripheral blood cells from nonleukemic group and acute leukemic patients, STYK1/NOK messenger RNA (mRNA) expression was analyzed by quantitaive reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction. The effect of inhibition of STYK1/NOK mRNA on the leukemic cells was also examined. RESULTS: When appropriate, cutoff was set using the values in nonleukemic individuals, positive STYK1/NOK expression was detected in 80.0% of leukemic patients. STYK1/NOK mRNA was highly expressed in the patients with trisomy/tetrasomy 21. mRNA expression began to decrease after chemotherapy with various drugs; this resulted in a decrease in the number of leukemic blasts in the patients peripheral blood samples. Such changes in the gene expression were also noted in promyelocytic leukemia (M3) patients treated with all-trans retinoic acid. In addition, transfection of small inhibitory RNA against the STYK1/NOK gene into K562 cells inhibited their growth in proportion to the decrease in the mRNA expression. CONCLUSION: These results indicate that STYK1/NOK mRNA is widely expressed in the patients with acute leukemia and suggest that inhibition of this molecule could potentially serve as a novel therapeutic target.

BACKGROUND: Alterations in gene expression levels or mutations of tyrosine kinases are detected in some human cancers. In this study, we examined whether serine threonine tyrosine kinase 1 (STYK1)/novel oncogene with kinase domain (NOK) is overexpressed in patients with colorectal cancer. We also examined the clinical relevance of STYK1/NOK expression in cancer tissues. MATERIALS AND METHODS: In tumor samples of patients with colorectal cancer and their matched non-cancerous samples, STYK1/NOK messenger RNA (mRNA) expression was analyzed by quantitative reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction. Associations between the expression levels of STYK1/NOK and clinicopathological characteristics of colorectal cancer were also assessed using Mann-Whitney U and Kruskal-Wallis tests. RESULTS: Upregulation of STYK1/NOK was found in cancer tissues even at early stage of colorectal cancer compared to normal adjacent tissues. The optimal cutoff point of 0.198 the STYK1/NOK expression showed 0.78 sensitivity and 0.75 specificity for diagnosis. Overexpressed STYK1/NOK was correlated with tumor size but had no association with other clinicopathological characteristics of colorectal cancer. CONCLUSIONS: These results indicate that STYK1/NOK mRNA is widely expressed in the patients with colorectal cancer and suggest that inhibition of this molecule could potentially serve as a novel therapeutic target.